Local Spotlight: Nellie Young

If anyone has embraced Rotary International’s motto “service above self,” it’s Nellie Young.

Nellie, of Eliot, just turned 16 last week. She’s a member of the Marshwood High School Interact Club, a student branch of Rotary International. Roaming through the halls at Marshwood High School, she saw a poster for an Interact Trip to Peru and was immediately interested. A member of the hiking club, she was intrigued by the opportunity to visit Machu Picchu, a 15th-century Inca citadel on a mountain ridge in Southern Peru.

The high school sophomore has grown up participating in many Rotary events alongside her mother, Maryna Shuliakouskaya, the former Kittery Rotary Club president and current assistant district governor overseeing an area of Rotary District 7780.

Typically, Rotary trips include some sort of service project. Nellie was surprised to find that the student trip to Peru did not, and she said, “I decided to do something about it.”

She enlisted the help of her mother, who she said has “a lot of connections,” and they connected with the Pachacamac Rotary Club of Lima, Peru.

Working with the Peru club, Nellie decided on a project to help an early elementary school in Curva Zapata-Pachacamac  for students 3 to 7 years old. The school building is in great disrepair, with many safety issues. It also lacks clean, drinkable water.

“It’s just completely brown water,” said Nellie. “Kids have to bring their own water bottles to school,” she said.

The school desperately needs to be replaced, but attempts to get funding had been unsuccessful.

That is, until Nellie stepped in.

She has a goal to raise $15,000, and so far has raised $11,000.

The money will go toward the creation of a new building with a shipping container base that would be equipped with air conditioning and water filters. The funding will also provide school supplies and replace decades old furniture.

Nellie has presented her project to several Rotary Clubs and has received money not only from clubs, but from individual members. She also has an online fundraising page, has asked for donations as birthday and Christmas gifts, and has held fundraising events like a gift card raffle.

While on her trip to Peru in February she wasn’t able to visit the school because her schedule was so packed.

“We were leaving our hotel at 6:30 every morning and sometimes 4 or 5, and coming back around 11 p.m. every night. We were always hiking or always out (exploring) the towns,” she said.  

Nellie said she enjoyed the opportunity to travel with a bunch of teens and see the landscape and culture in Peru.

“It was the most life-changing experience ever. I loved it,” she said.

Her favorite part, she said, was how nice the people were. She and her friends were in a town during a festival where people throw balloons filled with shaving cream. Her friend got hit by a balloon and her earbuds and an expensive emerald earring got knocked off.

“We actually had like 20 or 30 people on the street looking with us. It was so shocking to me having that many people trying to help us. We couldn’t really speak the language, but everyone’s pointing and trying to figure out what we’re looking for,” she said. “I feel like if I was in New York City or somewhere else, no one would have even cared, they would have just walked by us.”

Though she is an avid hiker, hiking in Peru posed some challenges. At elevations of 10,000 feet and higher, temperatures dropped to 40 degrees, but the sun was so strong her scalp got sunburned. It was also harder to breathe at such high elevations.

“It felt like you were running on a treadmill every time you took a step,” she said.

She especially enjoyed the food, even though one time she was served soup, and not told until after she ate it that there was llama and guinea pig meat in it. (The guinea pig, she said, tasted like “a very small chicken.”

She will be going back to Peru in July with her mother to see the start of the project she is funding, and meet some local Rotarians and school officials.

“I went there during February vacation which is their summer, and now I'll be going back there in July which will be their winter,” she said.

There are about 23 students who attend the school at Curva Zapata-Pachacamac, and the population is expected to increase to 45, as more parents will want to send their children to the new, safer building.

Nellie said she was drawn to this project because her mother taught her to be grateful for the public education system in the United States. Her mother grew up in Belarus where girls weren’t always afforded the same educational opportunities as boys. She said she felt as an American she had an opportunity to help the children in Peru, where the United States dollar is strong and her fundraising can make a difference.

Saco Bay News Publisher Liz Gotthelf can be reached at [email protected].