We are all just drops in a big, huge bucket. Sometimes it seems the things we do don't have much impact because the bucket — the need for change and improvement — is so big, and each of us is just a drop. But if I work on what's important to me and you work on what's important to you, pretty soon we're filling that bucket. – Wes Orton
SALT LAKE CITY — If you ask Wes Orton, he'll tell you he's "just a normal high school student."
"Except when I'm out running summer camps, that is," Orton said.
A senior at Innovations Early College High School, the youngest son of late U.S. Congressman Bill Orton and Jacquelyn Orton, has been named the state's top high school volunteer for his work with schoolchildren on the Navajo reservation in southeastern Utah.
Along with older brother Will, Orton has now founded two summer enrichment camps on the reservation — Camp Einstein, a STEM-based program opened in 2011; and Camp Shakespeare, an elementary-level literary academy set to open this summer.
The camps are meant to extend and supplement the children's formal education, which in one of the state's most undereducated and impoverished communities, is far from adequate.
“The people down there just don’t have the resources that my brother and I had," Wes Orton said. "We were given privileges that these kids would never have unless we went down there and gave it to them."
The teen's service earned him the prestigious Prudential Spirit of Community Award, given to one high school student and one middle school student from each state. He is now competing for one of five national awards.
All state award recipients will be flown to Washington, D.C., in May for an awards gala at the Smithsonian Institution. State winners will receive a $1,000 scholarship and a silver medal. National winners will receive $5,000 in scholarship money and $5,000 to donate to the charity of their choice, along with a gold medal and a crystal trophy.
The monetary award is a welcome boon, Orton says. Two years ago, he opened a small business to fund Camp Shakespeare called "Wes' Workshop," an operation in which he builds and installs mounted coat hangers in homes and offices.
Orton has raised more than $5,000 for meals and materials — enough to fund the camp's debut year.
"We are all just drops in a big, huge bucket," he said after accepting his award from Principal Kenneth Grover. "Sometimes it seems the things we do don’t have much impact because the bucket — the need for change and improvement — is so big, and each of us is just a drop. But if I work on what’s important to me and you work on what’s important to you, pretty soon we’re filling that bucket.”
Although he will soon leave for college on the East Coast, Orton said he plans to return to the reservation for many summers to come.
"I don’t feel like this is the end," he said. "I feel like this is just the beginning."
Email: aoligschlaeger@deseretnews.com, Twitter: allisonoctober