VO250: Rediscovering Volunteerism in Lexington
The effort is called VO250. The VO, like Lexington’s original telephone exchange, stands for “Volunteer.” It’s been said that Lexington ‘runs on volunteerism’, and that is true. However, there continues to be a need for volunteer support for everything from local governmental committees to community organizations like the Lions Club, Rotary Club, FISH, LexPride, Munroe Center for the Arts, and Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, just to name a few. The list is long and the need for volunteers is real.
One of the VO250 leaders, Select Board Chair and Lex250 Commission member Doug Lucente, credits Lexington resident Sara Bothwell Allen with planting the seed for VO250. Lucente explained, “The idea behind the VO250 came from two different places. First, we had a resident come to the Lexington 250th commission with an idea of doing something with volunteerism or some project with volunteerism to help inspire people to volunteer in general. At first, I asked myself ‘how does this connect to the 250th?’ And as we talked more about it on the Commission, it became clear that the volunteer militia in Lexington all risked their lives to help protect Lexington and the rest of the country from tyranny. Their actions that morning ignited the War for Independence—the first armed resistance to the tyranny of the Crown.”
Sara Bothwell Allen acknowledged, “I think I approached them last summer. They were well into all of their other programming, and it just took a while to figure out when the appropriate start time would be. One of the things I really like is that it’s a forward-looking endeavor. We’re re-dedicating, recognizing and recruiting volunteers so everything doesn’t end after Patriots Day this year. It goes forward into the future. So, having this initiative start in April of this year and go forward for a full year, I thought was a good timing decision suggested by the 250th Commission.”
Lucente explained that when they proposed that timeline, he liked the idea of a yearlong event. But, like the Countdown Calendar, he wanted a physical structure that would promote the project and keep people updated regarding the progress being made. He said, “Six months prior to discussing the volunteer initiative, I was in a meeting with our economic development director, and she showed me a picture that I had never seen before of an arch that was built in 1875 and placed on the Battle Green. It was erected on the Battle Green when President Grant came to visit Lexington for the Centennial Celebration in 1875. It felt like the perfect way to celebrate Lexington in this current era. 150 years later we were talking about decorations, and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, it would be beautiful to recreate the arch from 1875.’ So, those two ideas of the arch merging with the volunteer project, set VO250 in Motion.”
Lex250 Commission Vice Chair Mona Roy explained that she envisioned Lex250 to be more than a weekend-long event. She said, “Lex250 is not just about the big weekend. We’re very fortunate that we had a very successful Patriots’ Day weekend and we’re proud of kicking off the celebrations for the nation’s 250th birthday. But in Lexington, it’s not just about that one battle. We didn’t become Lexington or become America because people had one battle and gave up. We continued. The spirit of volunteerism has been there since day one and continues today. What makes Lexington unique, as evidenced even by Lexington’s original telephone exchange, is that we’ve always prided ourselves in the culture of volunteerism. We’ve always leaned in. We’ve always realized that we do more together than apart. We realize that Lexington is what it is because we see something bigger than our own small world, and that’s what makes us special. That is what makes us quintessentially Lexingtonian. And whether you’ve been here for generations or whether you moved here a week ago, you get to be part of the Lexington story because we want a town where everyone gets to contribute and that’s what VO250 is about. We continue the revolution.”
Counting Up Rather Than Counting Down
Lucente, who helped to conceive the Countdown Calendar leading to April 19th, thought this project should move in a different direction. Rather than counting down, he and the other VO250 proponents decided to count up the number of volunteer hours given by everyone in the community. He said, “We looked at it and the idea just sparked, ‘Let’s make the arch count up.’ We had spent a year counting down the days to get to the 250th and I thought, ‘Let’s take this opportunity to use the arch to count up volunteer hours.’ So we decided to make the program a year-long celebration rather than just a volunteer project for a month or some shorter period and to really build something where folks could be active participants in seeing it grow.” Bothwell Allen added, “I have a ninth grader and he was entering high school and I was thinking about his community service requirements, 10 hours a year across the four years. That’s a high school graduation requirement. I was thinking it’d be such an amazing, uniting thing if everyone in town was doing what we were expecting of our high school kids. And if the high school kids with their busy lives can fit that in, surely all of us can too.”
The team behind the VO250 Arch is the same folks who designed and built the Countdown Calendar. Doug Lucente’s brother-in-law Eric Campbell was once again eager to participate, as was architectural student Anna Petro from Endicott College, who designed the structure to replicate the arch from 1875. Petro is a friend of Doug’s daughter, Madelyn, who is also a student at Endicott College. Rounding out the crew is local contractor Chris O’Neill and John Flanagan, who created the eagle perched at the top of the arch. It has been outfitted with a series of lights that will be illuminated upward every time a 20,000 hour goal has been met. The lights will rise up on the left and right sides of the arch until it reaches the ultimate goal of 250,000 total hours of volunteer service in Lexington. Members of the steering committee agree that 250,000 hours is a lofty goal, but all agree that it can be reached.
From here, a VO250 steering committee was established to develop a set of goals and initiatives. It was decided to reach out to the entire community and ask those who are already volunteering in Lexington to log their hours and encourage others to volunteer a certain number of hours. They are also working to identify organizations that can participate as an entity. They hope that by bringing volunteers together with dozens of community-based organizations, people can find a fulfilling outlet for their volunteer hours, and organizations can benefit from having new participants.
Bothwell Allen explained, “Mona Roy and I have been trying to reach out to organizations that both are recruiting or are looking for more volunteers and
trying to get them to help us populate the calendar of volunteer opportunities. So, I am hoping that more organizations that have opportunities will learn about the structure we’ve created so they can make use of it. And then it’s really like a hub for people who are looking for volunteering opportunities, to find those opportunities and for those organizations to say, ‘Hey, we really could use help with this event or that project.’”
She continued, “The other thing we’re trying to do is recognize the volunteers that are already giving a lot of their time and get to that first lighting at 20,000 hours on the arch. I think once people who are volunteering so much start logging the hours that they’re already volunteering, and we get that first set of lighting done, I think that will also help draw more interest from people who are walking by and saying, ‘What’s the arch about? What’s this light bulb about? How can I be part of this?’” Bothwell Allen emphasized that people are encouraged to log their volunteer hours dating back to April 1, 2025.
The VO250 website is set up to be user-friendly. It’s intended to be used by both individuals and organizations to quantify the total number of volunteer hours, while providing a resource for folks to identify volunteer opportunities in Lexington. There are three basic levels for volunteer service. Initially, people are asked to give at least 10 hours of volunteer service. The next level is the Hank Manz Level, which requires at least 100 hours of service. Hank Manz was a former chair of the Lexington Select Board, a leader in local scouting, and a major force in local youth hockey. He passed away in 2020. The ultimate goal is to collectively achieve 250,000 hours of volunteer service from all participants by Patriots Day in 2026.
All volunteers will be identified on the VO250 website and in a special section of the Lexington Times. The Lexington Times will publish periodic updates, and the VO250 Arch will tell the story throughout the year by lighting up like a thermometer at 20,000-hour intervals.
Finally, VO250 is planning a huge celebration at the end of the year-long volunteer initiative as a way to show appreciation to the hundreds and hundreds of expected volunteers. Lucente concluded, “ I think we’re lucky in Lexington, we have people volunteer all the time. We don’t always do a great job recognizing it because some people give in a big way and some people give in a small way, but each person who gives should be recognized and appreciated. We need to recognize our volunteers and express our appreciation. We will do that throughout the year, and with a major event in April of next year.”
lex250.0rg/vo250/
