Sheela Clary

Last spring three experiences in quick successtion got me wondering about the word “community,” and how it we conceive of it in regard to wealth. Here in South Berkshire County, Massachusetts, where I was born and raised and still live, I used to manage a fund that paid for local low-income kids to attend summer camp. Though the money was spent down during Covid, a guidance counselor reached out last April, seeking support for one of his students. He had a kid I’ll call Tim who wanted to attend a couple of weeks of camp, but his family couldn’t afford the tuition. So I contacted a local camp to ask if we might put together a package of financial aid combined with donations, an approach that used to work. No longer, said the camp. The need was far too great, and their aid was already tapped out. (The number of poor students in the Berkshire Hills Regional School District has more than doubled in the past fifteen years, with 43%, or 506 of the district’s 1179 students, qualifying as low income today.)