Community Corner
Eagle Scout Project Refurbishes Branford Community Dining Room
Local Scout Jake Cogguillo said he had volunteered at the local soup kitchen before.
Jake Cogguillo’s family has done volunteer work for the Branford Community Dining Room before, so it quickly came to mind earlier this year when he began planning his Eagle Scout project.
Jake, 17, a senior at Fairfield Prep in Fairfield, said his aunt, Beth Hotchkiss of North Haven, organized Thanksgiving food drives for the Community Dining Room, and he volunteered there as well.
"It’s been a part of our family for a while," he said.
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So as the time for his project approached, he met with Executive Director Patricia Kral to see what its needs were. Kral said she suggested an extensive cleaning of the Community Dining Room kitchen and repainting the kitchen and dining room.
That fit the guidelines for an Eagle Scout project, which Jake said must be beneficial to the community where he lives, involve a nonprofit or charitable organization and have the approval of his scoutmaster and other local scouting officials.
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These projects are a centerpiece for the qualifications to advance to Eagle Scout, the highest rank for a Boy Scout.
But it is not enough for the Eagle Scout candidate to do all the work himself. Jake said he recruited other members of Scout Troop 401 to help him and solicited donations of cleaning and painting supplies from local businesses.
Work on the project was completed over two weekends in August, and Kral said it was a terrific benefit to the Community Dining Room program. "It was a great thing and it really helped us," she said.
The Community Dining Room, located at 30 Harrison Avenue, Branford, provides breakfast, lunch and dinner meals for people in need from Branford, East Haven, North Branford, Guilford and Madison, and it prepares home delivery lunches for homebound people.
On Tuesday nights it runs a reading literacy program for children in conjunction with the dinners.
"We serve about 4,000 meals every month," Kral said. Most of the clients are people who are unemployed or underemployed because of the bad economy, she said.
Jake said he hopes to receive his Eagle Scout advancement in February at a Court of Honor ceremony at the Old Stone Church in East Haven.
