LIFTT Executive Director Carlos Ramalho (Center) with the team from Catholic Heart Workcamp that spent a week helping out in the Billings LIFTT office. Thanks for your good work CWHC Campers and Team Leaders!
LIFTT would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to the participants and organizers of the Catholic Heart Workcamp (CHWC) for including us as one of the nonprofit organizations they chose to assist during their recent camp here in Billings.
CHWC is a program that brings together groups of teenagers sponsored by Catholic schools and parishes throughout the country to a community where they spend the week helping at local non-profit organizations.
From June 24-27 a group of 7 teenaged volunteers from Illinois, Minnesota and Colorado along with two team leaders reported each day to the Billings LIFTT office working on projects such as digging up a broken water line, weeding our sidewalks and parking lots, cleaning out filing cabinets, helping to moving items into and painting the new storage shed as well as cleaning up vacuuming and polishing the wood in the auditorium.
The LIFTT group was one of 34 groups deployed to sites around the Billings Area. The Lockwood School campus served as a home base for the CHWC in Billings.
Part of the CHWC experience is that where possible the various groups coming from a particular church or school are mixed up so that the individuals comprising each work group begin their time together virtually unknown to each other leading to the need for the youth to engage in community building with each other as well as those they are working with.
Typical of these teenagers was a young woman named Claire from Colorado who said that she had signed up for CHWC after a presentation at her local church. “My experience helping out LIFTT, meeting new people from all over and participating in the CHWC programming has been awesome beyond belief.”
In addition to their work at LIFTT, the teens and their leaders attended worship services each morning and participated in team building and other programs following dinner in the evenings. Saturday, June 28, was set aside as a free day with opportunities to explore our region. Some of the campers at LIFTT said they were planning to visit Lake Elmo State Park to fish and swim, while others intended to go whitewater rafting on one of the area’s rivers.
Again LIFTT would like to thank the CHWC, our team of campers: Grant, Conner, Jonathan, Paige, Ava, Chloe and Claire and team leaders Mikayla and Beau for all of their hard work helping to continue to the transformation of our (still new to us) Billings space into a true center for independent living where all are welcome.
The team from Catholic Heart Workcamp in the newly polished auditorium, From Left to Right: Mikayla (Team Leader, MN), Claire (CO), Jonathan (MN), Ava (MN), Paige (CO), Chloe (MN), Grant (IL), Conner (IL), Liam (IL), and Beau ( Team Leader, MN)
About Living Independently for Today & Tomorrow (LIFTT): LIFTT is a Montana 501(c)3 corporation organized as a Center for Independent Living (CIL). With team members based in Billings and Glendive, LIFTT provides aging and disabled members of the community with programs and services that help empower them to break down the physical, bureaucratic, and cultural barriers that prevent them from being fully independent participants in their lives and communities throughout 18 counties in southeastern and south-central Montana: Big Horn, Carbon, Carter, Custer, Dawson, Fallon, Garfield, Golden Valley, McCone, Musselshell, Powder River, Prairie, Richland, Rosebud, Stillwater, Treasure, Wibaux, and Yellowstone. For more information, please visit liftt.org or download our mobile app for your Apple or Android Device.