Last year Carlyle Bethel took $100 out of money he earned at a summer job to purchase breakfast items like corned beef, tuna and grits to feed the less fortunate that congregate at Retirement Park, the Paradise Island bridge and Potter's Cay Dock. For seven months, he fed those people through a club he formed at his high school. Then he graduated, but one thing he did not want to happen was for the club that became known as Q.C. 5000 to graduate with him. It didn't.
Bethel, a freshman studying finance at the University of Connecticut, returned home on Wednesday to find the club he founded continuing to thrive, and that it had actually evolved from where he left it.
"Honestly, I was extremely proud to see it [Q.C. 5000] continuing, because it shows that it's not just me with this passion," said the club's founder. One of our most committed members was in grade six when he joined. And now as a seventh grader, he's helping to run the organization. And they do an amazing job, because when I went out on Saturday, I saw that they had blankets, soap, tubes of toothpaste and toothbrushes that they were giving out for Christmas.
Under Bethel's leadership Q.C. 5000 supplied a hot breakfast to the less fortunate. He returned home to find the members still feeding the people a hot breakfast. On Saturday, the members served 125 hot meals consisting of steamed corned beef and grits and tuna and grits, over three hours from 5 a.m. to 8 a.m., but kicking it up a notch, handing out essentials like blankets and hygiene products like soap, toothbrushes and toothpaste to the less fortunate.
Q.C. 5000 is now run by a seventh-grade student named Peter Culmer, assisted by Bethel's sister, Morganne Bethel, an eleventh-grade student, who helps Culmer organize the club and get the high school students to help out -- especially the students who don't think they should listen to a seventh grader.
"Peter is one of our most committed members and he joined as a sixth-grader. Now as a seventh-grader he's helping to run the organization. I just feed the people, but the club has evolved and it's been taken up to another level."
He described Peter as an awesome guy with an amazing character.
"He's a really good kid with a real bright future. And if he keeps up what he's doing, he's going to go far, because the commitment and dedication that he shows is amazing. Some people say 'oh I'll be out there, I'll be out there' and they don't show up, or they come once, but don't show up after that. But Peter is always there, bright and early. He is a perfect example of the fact that age doesn't matter, and that it's what you have in your heart."
Bethel attributes his passion to serve others to his uncle, Lyall Bethel, pastor at Grace Community Church.
"He instilled this need and want to do community service in me when I was much younger, when we went to Haiti to do missionary work with his church. With that passion I started Q.C. 5000. I've now graduated, but the club continuing shows that there are other children with that same passion."
The 18-year-old Bethel, who says he loves doing community service work and helping people, says when you give to the community and help out, you're exposed to something that you were never exposed to -- especially when it comes to helping out the less fortunate.
"Sometimes we forget how much we really have... and especially at Christmas time, we want all these expensive things, and sometimes we forget that some people out there don't get anything for Christmas. When we were saying Merry Christmas, they were saying 'This don't feel like Christmas. What's Christmas? I haven't had a Christmas in the past 10 years'. So sometimes we forget that the real meaning of Christmas is not the toys and the presents, but Jesus. And it's a real eye opener and a real experience that students can even write about in essays," he said of the Q.C. 5000 initiative.
In his first break since leaving for school, Bethel says he sees so much potential for the Q.C. 5000 club and he hopes to see it continue to the time when he returns from school and can actually put a lot of his time into helping.
"In the future, my real dream is to build a homeless shelter where the homeless can go at night, so that they're not sleeping out in the streets during the winter when it's cold, sleeping under the bridge, but they can actually have a bed they can sleep in. Every journey starts with one step, and Q.C. 5000 started with one step."
Bethel, who returns to college on January 15, says Q.C. 5000 no longer serves meals ad hoc anymore either. In Bethel's year, when he arrived at the Retirement Park site he would walk about telling people the club was there and to come out for a hot meal. Now the club sticks to a schedule, feeding people on the third Saturday of each month, which makes Bethel proud. He admits that organization wasn't his strong point, but says his passion made him dive in and just do it. He's proud of his legacy and the way that it's been improved upon.
He also noticed that male participation had dwindled, but he implored the male students to help out, because he says the club sometimes needs that male presence to go along with the presence of the faculty and parents that support their children's efforts.
Before Q.C. 5000 was started Bethel would pass the Paradise Island/Retirement Park daily on his daily commute to school. He says the people would ask for $1, or if you had anything to eat, or whether they could get something to eat. Those questions tugged at the youngster's heart, and that's how he came up with the idea. The then twelfth grader spoke with his mother Lisa and they came up with the name Q.C. 5000, motivated by the biblical story of Jesus feeding 5,000 persons.
Bethel then took the idea to school and talked it over with two of his close friends Graeme Carey and Runako Aranha-Minnis. They were gung-ho about the idea. Bethel then took it a step further and decided to make it a club within the school.
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