Making Merry

Food packing.

There is a deep dissonance at the heart of the Hamptons. Long understood — and not wholly incorrectly — as a seaside haven for the uber-wealthy, the popular imagining of the East End drips with luxury and conspicuous consumption. But as long as there have been rich vacationers, there have been the people who work for them. Mansions need to be maintained, fancy cars chauffeured and repaired, and on and on and on. Historically, the working-class and poor communities of the Hamptons have been pushed out of view. But these communities obviously exist, and there is deep need in them, only exacerbated since the pandemic began. One organization that has stepped up to meet these needs is Hamptons Community Outreach.

Originally founded as a summer arts camp in 2018, Hamptons Art Camp was born when its founder and executive director Marit Molin noticed that underserved communities had a real lack of summer activities for their children.

“I have two children of my own,” Molin said. “I have an 11-year-old and a 14-year-old. When we first moved to the Hamptons, they would have playdates with children and I learned that they had nothing to do all summer. And so I started having this art camp with underserved children in mind.”

At the camp, 40% of the campers are non-paying, with their fees covered by donors. Of course, summer programming can only go so far in terms of making a difference in the lives of poor families.

“I realized quickly that free camp was not the only thing that these children needed,” Molin said. “They would start school with shoes that were too small [...] and then when the winter came, they needed winter boots and coats and it was very, very difficult for the families. I also learned that their parents’ phones were turned off regularly just because they couldn't afford to pay the bill, or they couldn't afford the electric bill. So, I started adding on a small outreach sort of department onto our Hamptons Art Camp programming.”

Molin was uniquely situated to do this outreach work. As a social worker, she has first-hand knowledge of the needs of underprivileged communities on the East End and relationships with those who most need help. Hamptons Art Camp started to support children outside of the school year, and their mission grew. Then, the pandemic hit, and the needs just got bigger. Molin wasn’t sure that camp would be able to happen, so she asked what communities needed.

“And all of them said, we need food,” Molin said. “We started fundraising and then started delivering 400 cooked meals per week. And those meals were from local restaurants that were struggling at that time.”

In addition to the cooked meals, they delivered pounds and pounds of fresh produce. According to Molin, since the beginning of the pandemic, 30,000 lbs. of fresh produce have been delivered to families in need. Groceries for 250 families have been delivered biweekly, and over 6,000 prepared meals have been made, served, and eaten.

“And then we really had to change the nonprofit’s name because we were so much more than just Hampton Arts Camp,” Molin said.

With a new name—Hamptons Community Outreach—and a wider mission statement, the non-profit started to add on programs and expand their outreach. These programs address essential material needs and much more across the East End and in the Shinnecock Reservation as well.

HCO’s ICARE crisis program is one aspect of the organization, aimed at helping people with nowhere else to turn. Supported by Hamptons Community Outreach’s community of donors, many of whom found out about their work through their social media presence, the crisis program has helped meet various pressing needs. Some of their work sounds more like miracles than mutual aid.

“We have helped a man in his forties, we restored his vision,” Molin explained. “He was fired, and he had lost the room that he was renting. He was literally starving, and we fundraised for an eyesight restoration surgery. His eyesight was restored 100% of one eye and 70% in the other eye. Today, he has a place to live, and he was hired back by that same employer that had fired him. He also volunteers now delivering food for Hamptons Community Outreach.”

The crisis program has helped many others with bills that would have otherwise gone unpaid.

“We also have paid off the car loan of a struggling single mother,” Molin said. “She was struggling every month to pay her loan. We were able to fundraise and pay her loan down to zero. We also were able to purchase a car for a young man, who was about to get fired. [...] We have paid an endless amount of cell phone bills and we've restored electricity for many families. Over the holiday we were able to fulfill 65 Santa Letters from families in need, and sadly, many of the families, instead of asking for toys for their children, they would ask for things like diapers or food or can you please turn on my lights so that I can have lights for Christmas?”

With its roots as a summer camp, HCO has continued child-centered outreach, tutoring underserved children in all grades. Another of the programs added on was mental health counseling.

“We provide counseling for free for struggling families,” Molin said. “It's everything from family therapy to couples therapy and to individual sessions for adolescents and children. We help people with depression and anxiety, also marital problems as well as substance abuse problems.”

Some of the most life-changing work the group does is home repairs, with support from Forden & Co. Builders.

“There are many people that live in the Hamptons with roofs that are caving in,” Molin explained. “They have moldy ceilings; the walls are covered with black toxic mold. They don't have appropriate plumbing. We visit houses and we just can't believe how these families live.”

Fixing up these homes does not only provide families with better, safer places to live, but can also remediate health problems. Connecting those in need to doctors and other healthcare providers who can work pro bono has been a goal and challenge for HCO, which is seeking more providers to help.

This is not an exhaustive list. Hamptons Community Outreach has fundraised for prom tickets and dresses for students, run swimming lessons at the homes of local families, hosted Mothers’ Day gift basket drives, delivered cookies to essential workers at Southampton Hospital, run continuous diaper and menstrual product drives, and much more. On their Instagram, needs are posted as they come in—for baby formula, dog food, hearing specialists and more—and donors step up. Local businesses, like Hampton Coffee Company, Bean Tween, and Stella and Ruby have also lent their support.

HCO’s good works have not gone unnoticed. In March of this year, Molin was recognized by county legislators as the 2021 Suffolk County Woman of Distinction. For their work rebuilding homes, the group won a Land Rover Defender in the inaugural Defender Above & Beyond Service Awards.

Molin, and other members of Hamptons Community Outreach, also see making the wider community more aware of the needs in the area as part of their directive to serve.

“We actually think of ourselves as poverty educators, because we meet so many people that say, ‘What are you talking about? This is the Hamptons,’” Molin said. “They don't understand. [...] We point out to them and show them what a gigantic struggle it is for so many people out here.”

Roxana Duron, one of HCO’s volunteers, echoed her sentiments.

“This is not a rich country like everybody thinks, we still have people who really need it, need a lot of help,” she said.

Molin also pointed to the unique difficulties of underserved communities on the East End.

“We also think that it's much harder for underserved people to — it's hard to be an underserved individual anywhere, but we think it's even harder out here because it's so expensive to live out here,” Molin said. “And also, it's hard for children. We speak to these children every day and they tell us how unfair it feels to look around and to visit friends’ houses and they have such beautiful things and beautiful houses and beautiful cars and they go home to so little. It feels so unfair to so many.”

Denise Silva-Dennis, an HCO board member, artist, and former educator from the Shinnecock nation, connected the difficulty to a lineage of history on the East End.

“It's just important for everyone to know that this didn't happen overnight,” Silva-Dennis said. “These aren't people who just don't want to work or they're just poor to be poor. It's a history that goes by and it's generational. It just doesn't end with one generation; everything feeds into the next one.”

Silva-Dennis also emphasized the importance of having a member of the Shinnecock nation involved within the organization. Besides being the secretary of the board, she’s been involved with arranging food deliveries and registering seniors for aid.

“It's vital,” Silva-Dennis said. “It's like any other organization, any other system, it's so important to have a place at the table to help and to provide insight.”

She spoke to the trust that Hamptons Community Outreach has created within the communities it serves.

“Marit and her way of supporting people and being a genuine person has fostered a lot of respect and just mutual understanding, education and trust,” Silva-Dennis said. “If Hamptons Community Outreach says they’re going to help you, they’re going to help you.”

For more on Hamptons Community Outreach, visit hamptonscommunityoutreach.org/ or the Facebook or Instagram @hamptonscommunityoutreach.

Thanksgiving turkeys for veterans.

There is a deep dissonance at the heart of the Hamptons. Long understood — and not wholly incorrectly — as a seaside haven for the uber-wealthy, the popular imagining of the East End drips with luxury and conspicuous consumption. But as long as there have been rich vacationers, there have been the people who work for them. Mansions need to be maintained, fancy cars chauffeured and repaired, and on and on and on. Historically, the working-class and poor communities of the Hamptons have been pushed out of view. But these communities obviously exist, and there is deep need in them, only exacerbated since the pandemic began. One organization that has stepped up to meet these needs is Hamptons Community Outreach.

Originally founded as a summer arts camp in 2018, Hamptons Art Camp was born when its founder and executive director Marit Molin noticed that underserved communities had a real lack of summer activities for their children.

“I have two children of my own,” Molin said. “I have an 11-year-old and a 14-year-old. When we first moved to the Hamptons, they would have playdates with children and I learned that they had nothing to do all summer. And so I started having this art camp with underserved children in mind.”

At the camp, 40% of the campers are non-paying, with their fees covered by donors. Of course, summer programming can only go so far in terms of making a difference in the lives of poor families.

“I realized quickly that free camp was not the only thing that these children needed,” Molin said. “They would start school with shoes that were too small [...] and then when the winter came, they needed winter boots and coats and it was very, very difficult for the families. I also learned that their parents’ phones were turned off regularly just because they couldn't afford to pay the bill, or they couldn't afford the electric bill. So, I started adding on a small outreach sort of department onto our Hamptons Art Camp programming.”

Molin was uniquely situated to do this outreach work. As a social worker, she has first-hand knowledge of the needs of underprivileged communities on the East End and relationships with those who most need help. Hamptons Art Camp started to support children outside of the school year, and their mission grew. Then, the pandemic hit, and the needs just got bigger. Molin wasn’t sure that camp would be able to happen, so she asked what communities needed.

“And all of them said, we need food,” Molin said. “We started fundraising and then started delivering 400 cooked meals per week. And those meals were from local restaurants that were struggling at that time.”

In addition to the cooked meals, they delivered pounds and pounds of fresh produce. According to Molin, since the beginning of the pandemic, 30,000 lbs. of fresh produce have been delivered to families in need. Groceries for 250 families have been delivered biweekly, and over 6,000 prepared meals have been made, served, and eaten.

“And then we really had to change the nonprofit’s name because we were so much more than just Hampton Arts Camp,” Molin said.

With a new name—Hamptons Community Outreach—and a wider mission statement, the non-profit started to add on programs and expand their outreach. These programs address essential material needs and much more across the East End and in the Shinnecock Reservation as well.

HCO’s ICARE crisis program is one aspect of the organization, aimed at helping people with nowhere else to turn. Supported by Hamptons Community Outreach’s community of donors, many of whom found out about their work through their social media presence, the crisis program has helped meet various pressing needs. Some of their work sounds more like miracles than mutual aid.

“We have helped a man in his forties, we restored his vision,” Molin explained. “He was fired, and he had lost the room that he was renting. He was literally starving, and we fundraised for an eyesight restoration surgery. His eyesight was restored 100% of one eye and 70% in the other eye. Today, he has a place to live, and he was hired back by that same employer that had fired him. He also volunteers now delivering food for Hamptons Community Outreach.”

The crisis program has helped many others with bills that would have otherwise gone unpaid.

“We also have paid off the car loan of a struggling single mother,” Molin said. “She was struggling every month to pay her loan. We were able to fundraise and pay her loan down to zero. We also were able to purchase a car for a young man, who was about to get fired. [...] We have paid an endless amount of cell phone bills and we've restored electricity for many families. Over the holiday we were able to fulfill 65 Santa Letters from families in need, and sadly, many of the families, instead of asking for toys for their children, they would ask for things like diapers or food or can you please turn on my lights so that I can have lights for Christmas?”

With its roots as a summer camp, HCO has continued child-centered outreach, tutoring underserved children in all grades. Another of the programs added on was mental health counseling.

“We provide counseling for free for struggling families,” Molin said. “It's everything from family therapy to couples therapy and to individual sessions for adolescents and children. We help people with depression and anxiety, also marital problems as well as substance abuse problems.”

Some of the most life-changing work the group does is home repairs, with support from Forden & Co. Builders.

“There are many people that live in the Hamptons with roofs that are caving in,” Molin explained. “They have moldy ceilings; the walls are covered with black toxic mold. They don't have appropriate plumbing. We visit houses and we just can't believe how these families live.”

Fixing up these homes does not only provide families with better, safer places to live, but can also remediate health problems. Connecting those in need to doctors and other healthcare providers who can work pro bono has been a goal and challenge for HCO, which is seeking more providers to help.

This is not an exhaustive list. Hamptons Community Outreach has fundraised for prom tickets and dresses for students, run swimming lessons at the homes of local families, hosted Mothers’ Day gift basket drives, delivered cookies to essential workers at Southampton Hospital, run continuous diaper and menstrual product drives, and much more. On their Instagram, needs are posted as they come in—for baby formula, dog food, hearing specialists and more—and donors step up. Local businesses, like Hampton Coffee Company, Bean Tween, and Stella and Ruby have also lent their support.

HCO’s good works have not gone unnoticed. In March of this year, Molin was recognized by county legislators as the 2021 Suffolk County Woman of Distinction. For their work rebuilding homes, the group won a Land Rover Defender in the inaugural Defender Above & Beyond Service Awards.

Molin, and other members of Hamptons Community Outreach, also see making the wider community more aware of the needs in the area as part of their directive to serve.

“We actually think of ourselves as poverty educators, because we meet so many people that say, ‘What are you talking about? This is the Hamptons,’” Molin said. “They don't understand. [...] We point out to them and show them what a gigantic struggle it is for so many people out here.”

Roxana Duron, one of HCO’s volunteers, echoed her sentiments.

“This is not a rich country like everybody thinks, we still have people who really need it, need a lot of help,” she said.

Molin also pointed to the unique difficulties of underserved communities on the East End.

“We also think that it's much harder for underserved people to — it's hard to be an underserved individual anywhere, but we think it's even harder out here because it's so expensive to live out here,” Molin said. “And also, it's hard for children. We speak to these children every day and they tell us how unfair it feels to look around and to visit friends’ houses and they have such beautiful things and beautiful houses and beautiful cars and they go home to so little. It feels so unfair to so many.”

Denise Silva-Dennis, an HCO board member, artist, and former educator from the Shinnecock nation, connected the difficulty to a lineage of history on the East End.

“It's just important for everyone to know that this didn't happen overnight,” Silva-Dennis said. “These aren't people who just don't want to work or they're just poor to be poor. It's a history that goes by and it's generational. It just doesn't end with one generation; everything feeds into the next one.”

Silva-Dennis also emphasized the importance of having a member of the Shinnecock nation involved within the organization. Besides being the secretary of the board, she’s been involved with arranging food deliveries and registering seniors for aid.

“It's vital,” Silva-Dennis said. “It's like any other organization, any other system, it's so important to have a place at the table to help and to provide insight.”

She spoke to the trust that Hamptons Community Outreach has created within the communities it serves.

“Marit and her way of supporting people and being a genuine person has fostered a lot of respect and just mutual understanding, education and trust,” Silva-Dennis said. “If Hamptons Community Outreach says they’re going to help you, they’re going to help you.”

For more on Hamptons Community Outreach, visit hamptonscommunityoutreach.org/ or the Facebook or Instagram @hamptonscommunityoutreach.

There is a deep dissonance at the heart of the Hamptons. Long understood — and not wholly incorrectly — as a seaside haven for the uber-wealthy, the popular imagining of the East End drips with luxury and conspicuous consumption. But as long as there have been rich vacationers, there have been the people who work for them. Mansions need to be maintained, fancy cars chauffeured and repaired, and on and on and on. Historically, the working-class and poor communities of the Hamptons have been pushed out of view. But these communities obviously exist, and there is deep need in them, only exacerbated since the pandemic began. One organization that has stepped up to meet these needs is Hamptons Community Outreach.

Originally founded as a summer arts camp in 2018, Hamptons Art Camp was born when its founder and executive director Marit Molin noticed that underserved communities had a real lack of summer activities for their children.

“I have two children of my own,” Molin said. “I have an 11-year-old and a 14-year-old. When we first moved to the Hamptons, they would have playdates with children and I learned that they had nothing to do all summer. And so I started having this art camp with underserved children in mind.”

At the camp, 40% of the campers are non-paying, with their fees covered by donors. Of course, summer programming can only go so far in terms of making a difference in the lives of poor families.

“I realized quickly that free camp was not the only thing that these children needed,” Molin said. “They would start school with shoes that were too small [...] and then when the winter came, they needed winter boots and coats and it was very, very difficult for the families. I also learned that their parents’ phones were turned off regularly just because they couldn't afford to pay the bill, or they couldn't afford the electric bill. So, I started adding on a small outreach sort of department onto our Hamptons Art Camp programming.”

Molin was uniquely situated to do this outreach work. As a social worker, she has first-hand knowledge of the needs of underprivileged communities on the East End and relationships with those who most need help. Hamptons Art Camp started to support children outside of the school year, and their mission grew. Then, the pandemic hit, and the needs just got bigger. Molin wasn’t sure that camp would be able to happen, so she asked what communities needed.

“And all of them said, we need food,” Molin said. “We started fundraising and then started delivering 400 cooked meals per week. And those meals were from local restaurants that were struggling at that time.”

In addition to the cooked meals, they delivered pounds and pounds of fresh produce. According to Molin, since the beginning of the pandemic, 30,000 lbs. of fresh produce have been delivered to families in need. Groceries for 250 families have been delivered biweekly, and over 6,000 prepared meals have been made, served, and eaten.

“And then we really had to change the nonprofit’s name because we were so much more than just Hampton Arts Camp,” Molin said.

With a new name—Hamptons Community Outreach—and a wider mission statement, the non-profit started to add on programs and expand their outreach. These programs address essential material needs and much more across the East End and in the Shinnecock Reservation as well.

HCO’s ICARE crisis program is one aspect of the organization, aimed at helping people with nowhere else to turn. Supported by Hamptons Community Outreach’s community of donors, many of whom found out about their work through their social media presence, the crisis program has helped meet various pressing needs. Some of their work sounds more like miracles than mutual aid.

“We have helped a man in his forties, we restored his vision,” Molin explained. “He was fired, and he had lost the room that he was renting. He was literally starving, and we fundraised for an eyesight restoration surgery. His eyesight was restored 100% of one eye and 70% in the other eye. Today, he has a place to live, and he was hired back by that same employer that had fired him. He also volunteers now delivering food for Hamptons Community Outreach.”

The crisis program has helped many others with bills that would have otherwise gone unpaid.

“We also have paid off the car loan of a struggling single mother,” Molin said. “She was struggling every month to pay her loan. We were able to fundraise and pay her loan down to zero. We also were able to purchase a car for a young man, who was about to get fired. [...] We have paid an endless amount of cell phone bills and we've restored electricity for many families. Over the holiday we were able to fulfill 65 Santa Letters from families in need, and sadly, many of the families, instead of asking for toys for their children, they would ask for things like diapers or food or can you please turn on my lights so that I can have lights for Christmas?”

With its roots as a summer camp, HCO has continued child-centered outreach, tutoring underserved children in all grades. Another of the programs added on was mental health counseling.

“We provide counseling for free for struggling families,” Molin said. “It's everything from family therapy to couples therapy and to individual sessions for adolescents and children. We help people with depression and anxiety, also marital problems as well as substance abuse problems.”

Some of the most life-changing work the group does is home repairs, with support from Forden & Co. Builders.

“There are many people that live in the Hamptons with roofs that are caving in,” Molin explained. “They have moldy ceilings; the walls are covered with black toxic mold. They don't have appropriate plumbing. We visit houses and we just can't believe how these families live.”

Fixing up these homes does not only provide families with better, safer places to live, but can also remediate health problems. Connecting those in need to doctors and other healthcare providers who can work pro bono has been a goal and challenge for HCO, which is seeking more providers to help.

This is not an exhaustive list. Hamptons Community Outreach has fundraised for prom tickets and dresses for students, run swimming lessons at the homes of local families, hosted Mothers’ Day gift basket drives, delivered cookies to essential workers at Southampton Hospital, run continuous diaper and menstrual product drives, and much more. On their Instagram, needs are posted as they come in—for baby formula, dog food, hearing specialists and more—and donors step up. Local businesses, like Hampton Coffee Company, Bean Tween, and Stella and Ruby have also lent their support.

HCO’s good works have not gone unnoticed. In March of this year, Molin was recognized by county legislators as the 2021 Suffolk County Woman of Distinction. For their work rebuilding homes, the group won a Land Rover Defender in the inaugural Defender Above & Beyond Service Awards.

Molin, and other members of Hamptons Community Outreach, also see making the wider community more aware of the needs in the area as part of their directive to serve.

“We actually think of ourselves as poverty educators, because we meet so many people that say, ‘What are you talking about? This is the Hamptons,’” Molin said. “They don't understand. [...] We point out to them and show them what a gigantic struggle it is for so many people out here.”

Roxana Duron, one of HCO’s volunteers, echoed her sentiments.

“This is not a rich country like everybody thinks, we still have people who really need it, need a lot of help,” she said.

Molin also pointed to the unique difficulties of underserved communities on the East End.

“We also think that it's much harder for underserved people to — it's hard to be an underserved individual anywhere, but we think it's even harder out here because it's so expensive to live out here,” Molin said. “And also, it's hard for children. We speak to these children every day and they tell us how unfair it feels to look around and to visit friends’ houses and they have such beautiful things and beautiful houses and beautiful cars and they go home to so little. It feels so unfair to so many.”

Denise Silva-Dennis, an HCO board member, artist, and former educator from the Shinnecock nation, connected the difficulty to a lineage of history on the East End.

“It's just important for everyone to know that this didn't happen overnight,” Silva-Dennis said. “These aren't people who just don't want to work or they're just poor to be poor. It's a history that goes by and it's generational. It just doesn't end with one generation; everything feeds into the next one.”

Silva-Dennis also emphasized the importance of having a member of the Shinnecock nation involved within the organization. Besides being the secretary of the board, she’s been involved with arranging food deliveries and registering seniors for aid.

“It's vital,” Silva-Dennis said. “It's like any other organization, any other system, it's so important to have a place at the table to help and to provide insight.”

She spoke to the trust that Hamptons Community Outreach has created within the communities it serves.

“Marit and her way of supporting people and being a genuine person has fostered a lot of respect and just mutual understanding, education and trust,” Silva-Dennis said. “If Hamptons Community Outreach says they’re going to help you, they’re going to help you.”

For more on Hamptons Community Outreach, visit hamptonscommunityoutreach.org/ or the Facebook or Instagram @hamptonscommunityoutreach.

Hampton’s Community Outreach Organizaion holds a toy drive at the Bridgehampton Community Center on Sunday, December 21, 2020. Marit Molin, founder, and Chuck MacWhinnie, volunteer, unload a box of donations.