YASH RISBUD

Westwood baseball association

Westwood Environmental Advisory Committee

Westwood Planning Board

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Editor's note:  This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

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I started helping out a little bit with Westwood baseball even though my son wasn't even born yet. Neighbors of ours had kids in the program. Then I engaged with the Mayor at that time John Birkner, to see if the college I worked at could help out with the town's greening as we were getting off the grid at the time. There were six primary things, the geothermal piece, the water, energy, wind, solar, so we have to do a couple of environmental studies.  So I ended up being on the first, the Inaugural Committee for the environmental committee and that turned into an appointment.   

 

So yeah, it  is kind of crazy just talking about it!  And then four years ago I was elected president for Westwood baseball. I help out at some of the CIO, I was president of the school board in St. John's, and I became the PSO president for the middle school here. And I was appointed to the CIO sports board.

 

A lot of those days are coming to a close. This is my last year for a lot of things because my son will go to high school next year. So the parents have to take a step back, thankfully, but there'll be plenty of things going on.

 

I’ve tried to also kind of instill this volunteerism in my kids as well.  Since my son was either seven or eight, every year for his birthday, he's raised money for kids cancer or for other families in town that have gone through tragedies or for the food pantry. And my daughter has done a lot of volunteer work as well.  I'm very proud of both of them. 

 

For anyone thinking about volunteering in Westwood, well, I never envisioned ever taking this much on and never really wanted to, but it was a great way to meet neighbors. It was a great way to meet people that are part of our neighborhood.  I'm encouraged and I look forward to meeting the next new person. And I had great people who allowed me to help them out in the early days and and were happy when they could walk away from things. And I intend to be as happy about some of that with the volunteers that we have coming in. There's always something to do. There's never enough help. And never be afraid!  Everything from an email to volunteering at an event to taking something on. It all counts.

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