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Orecchio recognized for community spirit

Orecchio

WEIRTON — A Weirton youth has been recognized as among the nation’s top youth volunteers.

Chloe Orecchio, 11, recently was honored by the Prudential Spirit of Community Awards, a nationwide program recognizing young individuals for acts of volunteerism.

As a state honorees, she will receive $1,000, an engraved silver medallion and an all-expense-paid trip in early May to Washington, D.C., where she will join the top two honorees from each of the other states and the District of Columbia for four days of national recognition events. During the trip, 10 students will be named America’s top youth volunteers of 2019.

The daughter of Michael and Debbie Orecchio, and a sixth-grader at St. Joseph The Worker School, organized a monthly cleanup program — dubbed Chloe’s Campus Clean-up — to keep her school campus free of litter. While riding to school every morning, she began noticing litter along the sides of the road and in the school yard.

“All of the trash on our campus made our community look very dismal,” she said. “I told my parents that someone should clean it up.”

She prepared a PowerPoint presentation to explain her plan to the St. Joseph School Board. Then she started recruiting fellow students to form a cleanup team and gave them instructions on how she wanted to run the operation. The first cleanup collected four garbage bags of trash from the grounds of St. Joseph the Worker School, St. Joseph the Worker Parish and Weirton Madonna High School.

Regular clean-ups are scheduled the third Saturday of each month.

“It has made a big difference on the campus,” she said. “No litter to be found!”

Orecchio was nominated for the honor by officials at her school, who said her work has inspired others.

“Chloe is a very polite, helpful young lady,” said Recheal Fuscardo, principal at St. Joseph the Worker. “She is always looking for ways to help her fellow classmates and her community. Her thoughtfulness and wanting to help our school entrance and campus has had a big impact not only on the exterior of our school but on the interior as well. She has inspired other students to step forward and take pride in their school and community. We are blessed to have a student like Chloe in our school.”

Orecchio also recently was recognized by the City of Weirton with a mayoral proclamation, at which time Mayor Harold Miller noted 2019 as the year of the volunteer.

Quinn Raffo, 15, of Craigsville, also was honored.

The Prudential Spirit of Community Awards, now in its 24th year, is conducted by Prudential Financial in partnership with the National Association of Secondary School Principals.

“These young volunteers learned and demonstrated that they can make meaningful contributions to individuals and communities through their service,” said Prudential CEO Charles Lowrey. “It’s an honor to recognize their great work, and we hope that shining a spotlight on their service inspires others to consider how they might make a difference.”

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