Senator Continues "Summer of Service" Tour by Celebrating the Largest Service Project of its Kind in America

BECKLEY, W.VA. – Senator Jay Rockefeller today said the Boy Scouts’ Community Service Initiative is an ideal fit for West Virginia, where public service is a way of life.

Ahead of next week’s National Scout Jamboree, Rockefeller met with a group of Scouts, Troop leaders and officials with the Citizen Conservation Corps of West Virginia and the National Park Service. During their discussion, Rockefeller touted the Reaching the Summit Community Service Initiative as the biggest community service project of its kind in the country – and that it’s happening in West Virginia is no surprise, Rockefeller said.

“Leave it to West Virginia to embrace, with open arms and hearts, the Boy Scouts’ call to community service,” Rockefeller said. “Public service is in our bloodstream, and something that we come to naturally in West Virginia. Our deep sense of ‘neighbor helping neighbor’ is a perfect match for the Boy Scouts’ mission and legacy as a public service organization.”

The Boy Scouts created the Reaching the Summit Community Service Initiative to coincide with the 2013 Boy Scouts Jamboree being held at the Summit Bechtel Reserve in Fayette County. Volunteer initiatives, led by the Citizen Conservation Corps of West Virginia (CCCWV), include more than 350 projects in nine West Virginia counties during five days of the Jamboree. It is the first time the national Jamboree has instituted a community service campaign, and it represents the largest such initiative in the country.

http://www.rockefeller.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=efc00ca9-4efd-4069-b914-b3fe14213e01