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North Reading teen receives Haystack Award
July-August, 2003
(Right) Raymond Patch, chair of the Commission on Mission and Justice
Ministries, presents the Haystack Award to Melissa Jenkins of the North
Reading
Union Congregational Church.
After spending a week visiting health
clinics in Nicaragua as part of a student exchange program her sophomore
year, Melissa initiated a grass-roots ministry to provide basic healthcare
supplies to rural clinics in that country. Through an appeal to parishioners
and by contacting local doctors and pharmacists she collected 1,400
pounds of supplies such as toothbrushes, toothpaste, vitamins, band-aides
and cotton balls and personally delivered them to the clinics her
junior year.