Eagle Scout Projects Serve Schools, Shelters

Boy Scout Troop 52—one of the oldest in the nation—celebrated the achievements of five boy scouts earlier this summer.

Tai Dinger, Patrick Holland, Skyler Hughes, Daniel Scheiner and Teddy Weisman received their Eagle Scout awards, which required organizing and performing a service projects for the community. 

Their projects included organizing a series of book drives, painting the living area of a homeless shelter, building a wheelchair ramp for an organization that serves the homeless and organizing a field trip to the National Mall for students attending a school in an underprivileged area.

Teddy Weisman, a Bethesda resident and 2012 graduate of , repainted the living area of St. Luke's Shelter, in Washington, DC.

"I've been involved with the [homeless] shelter outside of the troop since 7th grade, serving dinners there about once every other month, so I picked my project by asking one of the shelter leaders what I could do to help out," Weisman said in an email to Patch.

"The paint on the walls of the living area was badly peeling, so I was asked to do the repainting. I had about twenty volunteers from both inside and outside Troop 52 help me out last October," and the job was finished in two days. "I've been back to the shelter to serve dinner a few times since my project, and I think it's been much improved."

Tai Dinger—a Chevy Chase, DC, resident who will be a junior at St. Albans School in the fall—constructed wheelchair ramps at So Others Might Eat, an organization that feeds and clothes some of Washington, DC's homeless citizens. Dinger's ramps made the clothing donation room accessible for people in wheelchairs for the first time.

Before the project, Dinger had not had any carpentry experience. Nevertheless, he organized a group of friends to construct and install the two plywood ramps, he told Patch in an email.

Skyler Hughes took his talents on the road, and organized a field trip to National Mall memorials for first-grade students attending the Webb/Wheatley Education Campus, which serves a very underprivileged area, Hughes explained to Patch. 

"I first got together a group of friends to research the sites and write scripts. For the actual field trip I trained three more of my friends to be the tour guides, using the scripts that had been written for them. We went to see the Lincoln Memorial, the spot where [Martin Luther King Jr.] gave his 'I Have a Dream' speech, the Korean War memorial, WWI and WWII memorials, and finally the FDR memorial," he added.

Patrick Holland, a student at Georgetown Day School, gathered books to donate to Books for America (an organization near Dupont Circle) by holding book drives at various schools and businesses in the area. He organized the volunteers and coordinated the drives, basing them on a template that he developed from a trial book drive at his school.

Daniel Scheiner, of Chevy Chase, also earned an Eagle Scout award.

Troop 52, which has met at the All Saints Episcopal Church on Chevy Chase Circle since 1920, celebrates its 100th anniversary next year, according to the troop's website. 

The troop also has a unique girls' patrol, called Venture Crew 52, formed in 1997, the troop's website added.