A Safe Place

In early July, it was revealed that the after-school enrichment program Project MOST, an East Hampton-based nonprofit that primarily serves students from the Springs and East Hampton school districts, is about to grow. It will not only take ownership of its longtime home at the Neighborhood House property on Three Mile Harbor, Project MOST also will build a new learning center on the site, thanks to a generous and anonymous donor.

The timing could not be better for what is an essential organization for many parents — one that became even more critical as the COVID-19 pandemic raised the cost of living in an already unaffordable region of the country, and just as inflation is driving more families to trim their budgets wherever they can.

Project MOST will construct what they are calling a “dynamic learning center” using a former house gifted to the organization that will be relocated to the Neighborhood House property on Three Mile Harbor Road. The donor remains anonymous, but the East Hampton Neighborhood House Association, another nonprofit that has operated the facility as a community center and preschool for a century, is donating the 2.4 acres of land to Project MOST in an effort that will partially merge the entities.

Both donors deserve to be lauded for supporting the mission of this nonprofit — an organization that serves the year-round population and benefits our most valuable resource, our children.

Also supporting this effort is Ben Krupinski Builder, named for the former owner of the company, a longtime East Hampton resident, businessman and philanthropist who quietly supported many nonprofits during his lifetime. Ray Harden, one of two longtime senior managers of the company who took over the firm after Krupinski died in a 2018 plane crash, noted how important Project MOST is for working parents, “some who hold two and three jobs — to have a safe place for their children to play and learn, so near to where they live and work.”

The Project MOST Learning Center will expand the organization’s reach, but also its ability to provide robust programming. Since 2001, when the organization was founded to provide enrichment services for prekindergarten and elementary school students, this vital group has worked with little funding to provide a lot in the way of academic programming, athletics, and creative and performing arts, as well as prekindergarten classes and after-school care.

The potential after this new evolution is exciting, to say the least, coming at a time when many children are emerging from the pandemic in need of social and academic support, which is at the heart of the Project MOST mission.

While the project is before the East Hampton Town Planning Board — and Michael Guinan, the nonprofit board’s vice president, said the group hopes to begin construction this fall — the organization still will need to raise significant funds to renovate the facility, which it hopes to raise through private donations.

In a sea of projects, this one certainly stands out as one to support.