Monday, June 17^th, Nexstar held its annual Founder’s Day of Caring to celebrate the founding of the company. It allows local stations paid time to volunteer in their community.

Each year, Local 22/Local 44 chooses a non-profit to be the beneficiary of their volunteer hours. This year, they chose Camp Ta-Kum-Ta in South Hero, a summer camp for kids who have or have had cancer. Already sponsors of the camp’s Santa 5K fundraiser every December, they knew they were a great organization to work with.

A few members of their team visited the camp and came up with a list of projects to tackle. They then made plans, secured supplies and organized volunteers.

Over the course of the day, about 30 members of the Local 22/Local 44 staff showed up to get their hands dirty. They hauled hundreds of pounds of gravel, painted bathrooms and helped garden and maintain the grounds, but their biggest project was restoring Grace’s Playhouse.

Grace Emery was a former camper who passed away in 2012. She donated her playhouse to Camp Ta-Kum-Ta, which was relocated to the campgrounds after she passed away. The playhouse is very important to the camp, but needed some help to keep it standing and safe for future campers. They repaired and replaced what needed fixing and gave the playhouse some fresh paint in its signature gray and purple.

The Local 22/Local 44 team was proud to be entrusted with something so meaningful to the camp and glad to have the opportunity to dedicate a day to helping in the community.

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