A group of kind teenagers constructed a bus shelter for a disabled boy who was getting wet while waiting for his school bus outside his home’s driveway. Ryder Killam, a 5-year-old from Rhode Island, was forced to wait for his bus in the rain every day because there was no shelter!

He had been using an umbrella up until that time, but it provided little protection from the cold weather in Rhode Island. Tim, Ryder’s father, explained. “The difficulty is that with the wind and fall weather in New England, it didn’t help much unless it was just a rainy day with no wind; otherwise, he’d get wet and not stay warm.”

Tim said: “I placed a post on Facebook looking to see if one of my friends or one of their connections might have an old bus hut. I see them here and there on people’s property and figured maybe someone had one and had grown children that might not need it anymore.

After the post, a WPS member suggested I reach out to the construction class at Westerly High and see if they would want to take on the project of building Ryder a bus stop hut.”

Dan McKena, a tech teacher at Westerly High School, responded to Tim and sent along a team of teenage students to complete the project, which was built with donated wood from the local community.

Over a couple of weeks, an amazing new construction was built making sure Ryder doesn’t get wet again. Tim says of the new construction: “Ryder uses it every day before school and his nurses wait inside it every day while they await his return home. He does like to go hang out in it from time to time as his fort as well. This project brought out community together a bit, it showed that there is still so much good in this world and town!”