After eight years in a corporate job, Carolyn Casey ’87 needed some time. Time to observe. Time to reflect on social justice. Time to think about how best to serve. So she decided to drive cross-country, west to east, visiting civil rights monuments, doing volunteer work and gaining inspiration from those on the front lines.
Casey spent time on a Native American reservation in Arizona, visiting new mothers with her sister, Kathleen Casey, M.D., ’84; helped build a home with Habitat for Humanity in Mississippi; pulled 24-hour shifts in a domestic violence shelter and worked in a food bank in Alabama; and pitched in on a playground project in Georgia.
“It was a really beautiful experience of seeing our country and loving America with all its bumps and faults and challenges,” she recalls.
It was on that road trip that Casey had an idea: tapping the energy and potential of young people to promote service and unity in their communities and across Massachusetts. That idea became Project 351, a nonprofit that enlists one eighth-grader from each of the state’s 351 cities and towns for a year of leadership training and service.
Now in its eighth year, Project 351 has trained more than 3,000 eighth-graders — called “ambassadors” — who have tackled issues from hunger to hurricane relief and, in all likelihood, put them on a lifelong path of helping others.