The U.S. Coast Guard monitors traffic on the seas around the United States, takes on drug traffickers by making arrests and confiscating shipments of illegal drugs, plays a critical role in sea rescues and much more.
It also helps kids build rowboats, according to a report in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.
The activity was profiled recently by the service.
Petty Officer 2nd Class Cynthia Oldham explained Coast Guard members in the Boston area are taking their expertise to the city's Seaport District, where, in the Community Boat Building center, their interdiction is with kids handling hammers, not drug dealers handling cocaine.
"The boat building program supplements a typical 5th grade curriculum and allows Boston Public School students to build life-sized, seaworthy wooden rowboats. So seaworthy, that come each spring, a party is held to launch their boats into the water to enjoy over the summer," the report said.
"A lot of the kids we work with are from low-income families and don't have the same kinds of experiential opportunities their wealthier peers may have," Stockton Reece, executive director of the boat building effort, said. "The Coast Guard's involvement is fantastic because even though many of our students have grown up just miles from the ocean, they do not know anything about boats or what it means to be on the water."
Volunteers are from the Coast Guard Station Boston and the First Coast Guard District Staff, the report said.
The program dates back to 2007, when 5th grade teacher John Rowse helped his class build a wooden boat in the hallway of his school.
For the rest of this report, and more, please go to Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.