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[bright music] [bright music continues] - Good evening and welcome to a special edition of "NJ Spotlight News."

I'm Briana Vannozzi.

For the last year or so, we've had the incredible opportunity to introduce you to a number of people who are giving back to their communities in extraordinary ways through our digital documentary film series, "21."

The series examines the simple question of, does where you live in the state affect how you live?

"21" profiles one person in each of our 21 counties and looks at the social determinants that affect that person's life.

Well, tonight we introduce you to several more New Jerseyans who are going above and beyond.

First, meet Kasey Massa at Camp No Worries, in Burlington County.

The sounds of song and laughter fill the air but you'll never hear the word cancer uttered.

That's because Kasey uses what she learned throughout her recovery to provide a safe space where children facing a diagnosis of cancer and their siblings can just be kids.

Here's Kasey.

- Cancer is not going to define you.

It's gonna be a part of you just like the color of your eyes and the color of your hair.

It's one chapter of your story.

It's not the whole story.

Helping kids in a time where they feel like their whole world is based on this C word.

We help them find who they are again.

We help them find that child inside.

[gentle music] Growing up in Moorestown in Burlington County was a great experience because it was a very small town and it was very safe, and neighbors looked out for one another.

The summer entering fifth grade, I started to have seizures and we soon found out that I had a brain tumor and would need immediate surgery.

So that summer quickly went from plans as in spending time with friends, having to shift gears and plan for hospitalizations and surgery.

It really was an impact both not just on me, but me and my entire family.

[gentle music] Be kind to one another today.

[gentle music] Just the single key for camp, please.

It's the single one hanging.

I started to think about how I could impact families through providing experiences such as camp.

[gentle music] In 1995, we started camp here in Burlington County.

So what's very unique to Camp No worries is that we host patient, siblings, and bereaved siblings all in the same week.

And that is something no other camp across the country does.

My brother and sister were 100% the inspiration of having siblings join us at camp because I distinctly remember the questions of, why does my summer change too?

Oftentimes, they feel responsible for the safety and inclusion of their brother and sister and we can have counselors out here that tap them on the shoulder and say, "Hey, I've got that this week.

You can just be a kid."

[playful music] Each summer, Camp No Worries host 100 campers.

And to be able to do that, we need to recruit close to 150 volunteers.

We don't charge families to attend camp, so we work solely on donations and we don't want any child to ever experience a lack of opportunity based on financial needs, transportation needs.

This is all our community believing in the need and strength of camp.

[playful music] They're not a patient, they're not a sibling they're not a bereaved sibling.

They're kids and they're campers.

[kids cheering] [playful music] I love to see the kids when they go boating.

There's just something beautiful about looking out of the lake and seeing all the children enjoying the beauty of nature.

We wanted to create age appropriate opportunities for play and socialization.

We wanted to challenge kids to do something out of their comfort zone.

We wanted to support them and help them see the courage and strength they have inside.

[playful music] So I think when they come to camp, they quickly recognize and become so very comfortable knowing that they don't have to explain their day to day.

We are no filter kind of camp.

Campers will recognize whether a child has a special need or limitation and without adult guidance, find ways to include them in activities and it just happens naturally.

For a camper to move into a leadership role is just an amazing transition where we have campers who have gone from being a camper and who are now running camp in director positions.

- All right, where's my young at?

[crowd cheering] - The supporters for all boys A, you have two.

- Ryan T who's also in middle.

He is a survivor.

We created a survivor supporter lunch, which is really just a big party to recognize all the challenges each has overcome.

[crowd cheering] - Would all of the survivors please stand up?

[crowd applauding] - People need this.

I think our campers need it.

They see a counselor, someone they look up to a role model and know, "Wow, he or she had cancer too, and now look, they're in college, they're a teacher, they're a mom."

It may help answer some of those questions they're afraid to ask about their future.

Camp is about celebrating all of you and to end our survivor/supporter celebration, we are having cupcakes so stay seated.

[crowd cheering] [crowd chanting] [gentle music] We always recognize those campers who have not survived the disease.

And we engage in a memorial service for our campers and counselors just to remember our friends and recognize the impact they had on our lives.

[gentle music] It is important for families who attend Camp No Worries to know that their child is never forgotten and they're celebrated for years.

[gentle music] The feedback I hear from patients and families all the time is friends don't understand.

And I think what strikes me the most is, "I don't want to talk about cancer.

I just want to be normal."

So the conversations that are happening in the bunks are not about cancer.

The conversations are about Pokemon cards, friendship bracelets.

What's the newest TikTok video they watched in school this year?

And that is the beauty of camp.

I can't stress how many times I have heard, "I really got more than I gave, and this experience was life changing."

You've not only impacted the lives of the campers but you've impacted the lives of volunteers.

We also have people we meet along the way who say, "Oh gosh, I could never do that.

It must be so sad."

And I say to them, "Next year, why don't you come out to one of our visitor slots and see what it's like?"

And I see those faces transform as I'm walking them through camp.

People don't realize until you're out here and immersed in camp, how normal camp is.

[gentle music] Where I live has had an overall impact on how I live because I know how fortunate both I am and how fortunate my family is to live in such a close-knit community.

I want other children to have those same opportunities no matter where they're from in New Jersey.

I hope that the children who attend camp today continue to have a passion and love for camp and will carry on the legacy of camp.

To be able to take a fragile child, bring them to camp and see them leave with a different understanding, more confidence, a stronger sibling relationship.

Whatever little piece we give to them that they can carry through the rest of their lives, that's what we hope to do to make just a little difference in one chapter of their lives and build their hope, their friendships, and their story.

[gentle music] - Next, we take you up to Hunterdon County to meet Joe Morrison where life in the fast lane has an entirely different meaning.

A second generation drag racer, Joe spends his time off the track expanding his respiratory disease education and awareness campaigns through his nonprofit, Right2Breathe.

It was inspired by his father's late in life COPD diagnosis.

His mission is to help educate others to recognize symptoms early.

Here's Joe.

- In doing stuff for others is really kind of where true happiness is.

You can be the most successful person in the world but if you're not doing something for somebody else, what does that matter?

Kind of like, I woke up one day, I was like, "Oh my God, this is my mission in life is to do something about this."

I mean, how many more signs do I need?

Before I realized like, well, I think this is my calling.

[lively music] I am someone that does a lot of different things.

I'm a dad, I'm a son.

I'm a husband.

Started this nonprofit Right2Breathe eight years ago and musician and professional race car time.

I've had this love of car racing and all things motorized since I was very little.

I actually borrowed my parents' lawnmower and cut neighbors lawns when I was 10 years old to buy my own go-kart.

Growing up, loving cars, loving racing, got that from my dad.

And from my mom, that's where the love of music comes from.

Music to me is kinda magical.

I relate it to car racing as well.

It's like driving a race car and improvising a guitar solo or playing piano.

In that moment, you're in that moment, oh, you mean we're playing?

I thought we were just gonna stand here.

Let's sing.

I started a landscape business in 1994 and used that as my quote unquote "real job" while I continued to pursue a music career.

Despite having a lot of success and being in a lot of different bands and having a great time doing it, my dad and a mutual friend of ours bought a race car and they needed a driver.

And my dad said, "You know, you really should put Joe in the car."

I think one of the main reasons why my dad really wanted me to do what I love to do is because he experienced not having a choice.

I kind of felt like I had no purpose, I was kind of lost.

So the car racing thing, it just kind of reignited that love inside of me and I don't wanna say another chance at having a dream but that's kind of what it was.

I watched my dad do everything he was supposed to do to be a good dad.

Part of that included giving up his passion for car racing after my grandfather passed away at a fairly young age from lung cancer.

So my dad was kind of forced into taking over the family plumbing business and had to put aside his love of drag racing in order to be a good dad.

To follow in my dad's footsteps in that way and to carry on kind of that family love for car racing and to be able to bring it to the professional level where my dad never got to, it's something that I treasure and it's something that I'm grateful for every second.

Car racing, it's insane, it's intense, it's wild, it's crazy.

It's loud beyond belief and it's over too quick.

[car roaring] From what we learned all those years with my dad with his passion for racing, it's kind of the light bulb went off in my head.

Right2Breathe is the nonprofit we have that started based on my dad's journey with COPD.

He diagnosed in 2006 and he, he passed away in 2016, but we got a lot of great racing together.

You guys get a chance, stop over at the Right2Breathe booth.

COPD is a umbrella term that covers several different lung diseases.

As we start racing, my dad just starting to deal with this breathing problem.

He was trying to support me in our efforts to race together.

My dad didn't get diagnosed until he had already lost about half of his lung function.

Once it's gone, it's gone.

So the fact that we were racing together kept him moving and it gave him that motivation.

The problem is, is oftentimes, people living with COPD hesitate to advocate for themselves.

[gentle music] How do we help people living with lung disease still love their lives and still do what they love to do?

As time goes by, there's gonna be a higher and higher percentage of people with COPD that never smoke.

So what Right2Breathe has done, the additional questions of, have you been exposed to secondhand smoke?

Have you worked in environments where there's a lot of dust in pollutants and/or fumes?

We really felt we needed to do something more to address the fact that this is way bigger than most people think.

We have just a couple of questions survey.

Would you mind?

- While answering our screener.

you can have a hot cold.

- Oh, that'd be amazing.

- Here's my dad.

We're using racing as a way to keep him motivated and keep him healthy.

Here is a group of people the collectively the racing fans and participants who are in that 12 to 14 million Americans that are either at risk for it or the 16 million Americans that have it.

We felt like it was important to reach this audience with a message that they can understand.

With a story that they can relate to personally in a way that connects with them in a meaningful way.

And we felt like we could have the most impact by starting with this audience and then branching out beyond.

Right2Breathe does not diagnose anyone, which is why some of the things that we've developed along the way are what happens afterwards.

We have this great community of patients who comes together online, you can join our pulmonary chat meetings which allows patients to understand how to continue living with COPD.

Why don't we start out with some of the pulmonary chat stuff and we'll wrap up with the preparations for the Maple Grove event?

Are you speaking there, John?

- [John] No, no, I'm just attending as one of the patient advisors.

- Okay, gotcha.

In anything in life, having a community of people that understand you and know what you're going through because they're going through it themselves can really be helpful.

To me, the band, the racing community, the Right2Breathe community, it's like different branches of family.

I think that where you live very much affects how you live.

The power of environment can't be overstated.

[calm music] My dad, he passed away three days after his 70th birthday.

If he would've been diagnosed earlier, he'd probably still be alive today.

So that's where the urgency of our mission is because someone else will get more time with their loved one than I got with my dad.

Having actually impacted people's lives, that doesn't feel like work and that's what keeps me going more than anything else, is just the fact that there's a lot that needs to be done in this world and if not us, who?

[calm music] - Now back down to Cumberland County where Edgar Aquino-Huarte is using his voice to help push immigration reform in South Jersey.

Providing the undocumented with resources to obtain fair wages, safe living environments, and secure their driver's licenses all while keeping the farms in the Garden State flourishing.

Here's Edgar.

- The reason why a lot of documented workers have bags in their eye is not because they're tired but because they have built up tears of not being able to cry out loud, but to silently scream because they've just been not appreciated, mistreated, they're afraid to scream.

Now, for some reason, people forget the farm workers exist in South Jersey and you'd be surprised how people take that.

Like, "Wait, farm workers exist in New Jersey?

I didn't even know there were trees in New Jersey."

And I'm like, "Yeah, this is called the Garden State for a reason."

[gentle music] I grew up knowing that I wasn't from here.

We came straight to Bridgeton here in New Jersey to my mom's.

She didn't hide the fact that we weren't from here.

Both of my parents were agricultural workers.

Growing up in the low income family, I mean, undocumented we already didn't have enough resources ourselves.

I learned how to be independent at a young age.

I wanna say when I was 13, 14, that's when life hit us really hard.

And my mom, she got sick, she had to go back to Mexico.

I had to help my dad with bills.

The summer after my mom left, he sent me to go work in the fields.

My first job was picking peppers.

I would see farm workers on the outside but I was never the actual farm worker myself.

I went to school with another mentality.

I wasn't really a kid anymore.

I had to do both.

I had to work in the fields and in the factory.

So a lot of us had to grow up not knowing about our futures, having to learn ourselves.

So one of my many hopes for undocumented workers is that me and other organizers can get more youth to get involved so that we can give undocumented workers that courage to come out and fight for this immigration reform.

With an immigration reform, they can work freely, they can work without having the fear of getting in trouble.

Or they can travel back to their homes.

They can have that closure.

[gentle music] Undocumented workers have to face many things at work, which is workers in general that don't understand English or they don't know how to read English.

They're afraid to speak up because they don't want to get fired.

Maybe because there's no other job out there that will hire them.

A few similarities that undocumented immigrants and Americans have is this, the American dream.

Like what we deserve, like that respect.

When I was rushing to get my work done to go to school, the coworkers I got would finish for me.

Sometimes, they would take turns and they'll give me a ride to school.

And it shows that they wanted to see me succeed.

They had my back and they're not even my family members.

They became my family.

[gentle music] When I started working in these fields, I had that same mentality of defending people that are too scared to defend themselves.

[Edgar speaking in foreign language] One thing I loved about working in these many places, it's encouraging them to use their voice.

I love giving them hope.

I understand a little more now, so I need to give back.

DACA this an organization that advocates for immigrants.

One of those years, DACA was approved so I was able to apply for that.

That means I finally, for once in my life, had a choice whether I wanted to continue working there or find another summer job.

And another thing, I just became attached to a lot of these people that I would see every summer.

As far as my parents experience, one of the things was having to drive with no license.

[Edgar and man conversing in foreign language] So me giving back to them is me helping them apply for this driver's license.

Even those in Spanish, the test is somewhere advanced Spanish where they use words that we don't commonly use.

My boss and I, we were finding ways to make these study guides a little bit easier for them to understand.

I wanna say I've helped around 100 or so people.

[Edgar and man speaking in foreign language] Now that I can give back to them, help them get a license, it's like, it's something that I feel good about because today's driver's license, tomorrow, who knows?

Can be a work permit.

Then after that, residency.

And then your citizenship.

They know that, they were here when I was very little.

[Edgar and man speaking in foreign language] When I was a little, I've always wanted to be a storyteller.

I went to Cumberland County College but it was hard because I had to pay for my tuition and we didn't qualify for financial aid.

It felt like it was unrealistic.

Kinda like how I thought about it at first.

I took a couple criminal justice classes but at that point, I was gonna go straight to be an immigration attorney.

And so I just went back to film because I'm like, I can still help people through storytelling.

When I fell in love with screenwriting and when I found that that was my passion, I was there and again, I was using a lot of stories that I would take from my own experience.

I haven't finished the whole thing yet.

I just need to finish what we call the third act.

I think it's very important for immigrants to tell their stories because only an immigrant can tell their story.

Nobody else can tell their story.

[gentle music] Voices of the Soil is a project that I started a year ago.

I wanted to create a platform where I can showcase my short films, where I can showcase other people's short films from the community, where I can uplift small businesses and tell their story of how they started.

Give the audience the South Jersey that I see.

I want to show positivity.

I want to show just the good stuff that we've done as a community.

- That looks good.

- Does where I live affect how I live?

It does to an extent.

In Cumberland County, I talk about a big population of undocumented people, how a bunch of us are first gens.

I like representing where I come from.

Without unity, we can't really do much.

If I eat, I want my whole team to eat.

No matter what obstacle you have, if you have the desire of being somebody in life or a dream that you wanna pursue, it's something that we say in Spanish like with 'con ganas'.

'Con ganas' meaning like, if you really want to do something, you will do it.

There's a quote that my mom told me right before she left.

She said something in Spanish, which is, [speaking in Spanish], which translates to, "Always try your best because what you plant today, we harvest later."

And that's something that always stuck with me because I'm harvesting what she planted 23 years ago when we first came into this country and her dream was always for me to go to college, for me to follow my dream.

We're harvesting this together.

[gentle music] - You can experience some of the other extraordinary Jersey residents profiled in the "21" film series at MyNJPBS.org/21.

Take a look.

- [Speaker] New Jersey, we are the Garden State.

We should elevate that.

[bright music] What that means is you have to get more involved.

It just feels incredible.

[bright music] - [Speaker] How do you say, "I really don't feel like doing that.

That's impossible"?

[bright music] - [Speaker] It's not about me, it's not about no individual, it's about all of us.

[gentle music ends] - And that's gonna do it for us tonight.

I'm Briana Vannozzi.

For all of us here at NJ Spotlight News, thanks for being with us.

Have a great evening.

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Major funding for the "21" Film series is in part provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

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