For some college students, a good part of the four years they spend at college might be devoted to beer and hanging out. Justin Freedman (pictured here, right), a 21-year-old senior at The College of New Jersey [1], is not one of those students. His focus is on The Community, a nonprofit organization he co-founded with longtime friend A.J. Ernst.
“There’s always room for a beer or two, but we find the most rewarding thing you can do is to get involved in your community and to give back through service projects,” says Justin. “So what we sought to do is blur the line between hanging out and doing community service.”
Justin, who is majoring in history and secondary education, was born and raised in Lawrence, New Jersey. The Community, whose members are high school and college students, serves the entire Lawrence Township [2] area. “By bringing people together for the sake of giving back, The Community aims to raise awareness about the disparities that exist in and around our community and the challenges that many people face who may be as near as a next-door neighbor,” reads the organization’s website.
The Community’s current projects include a local blood drive, a food bank, and an environmental initiative. For the latter, The Community received a grant in December of 2009 from The Princeton Area Community Foundation [3] to distribute energy-efficient compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs to low-income and elderly residents of Lawrence.
So when community partner Sustainable Lawrence approached Justin about providing volunteers for Project Porchlight’s Lawrence Blitz on June 5, he was delighted to lend a hand—10 members of The Community helped Project Porchlight distribute CFL bulbs--and take some notes. “Project Porchlight is very inspiring,” says Justin. “It’s an organization that really shows the grassroots element of this movement towards sustainability. Project Porchlight showed us how the distribution of CFL bulbs can be done at a grassroots level. It was great to see how Project Porchlight gets a group of volunteers together, and then goes into a neighborhood and pushes the idea of energy-efficient lighting and all its benefits.”
Project Porchlight’s Lawrence Blitz was a huge success—900 CFL bulbs distributed—and part of our campaign to distribute energy-efficient light bulbs to residents across the state while educating folks about the energy efficiency programs that are available through New Jersey’s Clean Energy Program (NJCEP) [4]. Project Porchlight is an initiative of One Change [5], and the campaign is made possible thanks to funding by the state Board of Public Utilities (BPU) [6] and theNJCEP [7].
Justin was thrilled to help his community save energy and money. “Especially in this economic climate, it’s important that people can save every dollar that they can,” he says. “And I learned this from Project Porchlight: The more CFL bulbs we get in people’s houses, the more cars we are getting off the road. That’s something that we can keep in mind as a motivator in our push for energy-efficient lighting.”
Despite his youth, Justin has been serving his community for years. As a teenager, he served as president of the student body of Lawrence High School for four years, during which he helped lead initiatives that increased student voter registration and operated a service theater group that worked with children. Along with his leadership of The Community, which was founded in May of 2008, he also serves as a mentor in the Big Brothers Big Sisters [8] program.
“I think that I’m like anyone else. I like to do what I’m passionate about,” says Justin. “Since I have found my passion in giving back to my community and helping others, I just want to make my life meaningful, and this is a big part of it.”
Working to protect the environment is of paramount importance to Justin, and he is well aware that when it comes to protecting our environment, simple actions really do matter. “Simple actions matter is an important idea that is often overlooked,” says Justin. “It is the essence of our mission in terms of community-building. People should consider the simple actions that they can do to better their community, and replacing a single light bulb in their porchlight is a great example of that.”