BRATTLEBORO — A few weeks ago if you had asked Marguerite Dooley what she would be doing during her summer vacation, she might have answered that she would be working in Boston or Providence.
Instead, she'll be coming home to Brattleboro to implement a project in a community that previously gave her so much.
This is a lot to consider for a college student, but Dooley is used to the challenges of independence.
At 16, she was learning how to lease apartments and struggling with homelessness. Now she's secured a $10,000 grant to provide programs for homeless youth.
“[This] is definitely the right move,” says Dooley about choosing to come to Vermont to implement her project.
She says she feels lucky not to be experiencing homelessness, and that she wants to use her position as a thriving college student to give back. She says the support she received in the Brattleboro community - from strangers and the businesses downtown - was tremendous.
Dooley, a junior and a political science major at Wheaton College, is the recipient of a grant through “Projects for Peace,” an international competition founded by philanthropist Katheryn Wasserman Davis to encourage grassroots projects that promote peace. Dooley's was one of 11 projects funded in the United States in 2015; 106 awards were given to projects that take place around the world this year.
Dooley's project is about leadership, which she defines as “teaching other people how to be leaders.”
Her commitment is to the youth, and with her proposal she will create college preparation courses and provide activities for young people who are homeless.
In her proposal, Dooley wrote: “I want to create spaces for young people that nonprofit shelters cannot afford to supply.”
Dooley will join with Brooks Memorial Library and other agencies in Brattleboro to start up a program that will run at least one day a week during the school year and three days a week in the summer.
In addition to college preparation, Dooley will draw on artistic resources in the Brattleboro community to provide arts and crafts instruction. She's looking for artists to teach classes, to create a place for vibrant activities.
According to Dooley's proposal, volunteers will provide “caring and engaged adult supervision,” organizing educational games and creative art projects and making a “safe place” for at-risk young people.
The past few weeks have been a whirlwind for Dooley, who found out about “Projects for Peace” a week and half before the proposal was due.
She worked long nights and had staunch support from a faculty advisor who helped her see the proposal through.
It was difficult to write everything in such a short space, she says, but like other situations in her life, she reached her goal.