Jeffrey Reppucci ’14, of Newburyport, Mass., has been awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to Argentina where he will teach English to high school students during the 2014-15 academic year. The announcement caps Reppucci’s remarkable undergraduate career at the College of the Holy Cross which will end on May 23 when he delivers the valedictory address during Commencement Exercises.
A Russian major and member of the men’s hockey team, Reppucci has made a significant impact on campus, in the City of Worcester, and in communities around the world. In Argentina, Reppucci plans to launch a community service project replicating the success of numerous projects he executed over the past several years by combining his passions: working with kids, sports programming and infrastructure, and wellness and recreation.
Reppucci is the co-founder and president of the 501(c)3 non-profit organization Students Helping Children Across Borders. Along with the help of other Holy Cross students, the organization brings recreation and wellness opportunities/education to underdeveloped communities abroad. He has led the organization to design, fundraise and execute more than $200,000 worth of infrastructural development projects and community programming in five different countries (United States, Russia, Argentina, Haiti and Uganda). He designed and implemented a $22,000 community-building project in Suzdal, Russia, centered on fighting alcoholism in children through sports/recreation infrastructure and programming. Reppucci raised funds for and built a $5,000 home for a family in an underdeveloped neighborhood through a partnership with an Argentinian NGO and many student groups. He also developed wellness resources for the children in the community. Reppucci launched a $12,000 youth empowerment program at the IDEJEN School in Jeremie, Haiti, where 80 Haitian students are working together to build a commercial soccer field and launch the community’s first organized youth soccer league.
He is also the co-founder and executive director of Working for Worcester, where Holy Cross is located. Last year the project mobilized 540 college students from seven Worcester area colleges and universities to construct more than $62,000 worth of infrastructural improvements at 12 of the city’s recreation spaces. This year’s project mobilized more than 1000 volunteers, raised more than $100,000 and renovated 20 community recreation sites in the city. The effort was featured on “NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams” on May 6.
Reppucci is a 2013 Truman Scholar, a 2013 Rhodes Scholarship finalist, and 2014 recipient of the BNY Mellon Wealth Management Hockey Humanitarian Award. A three-time member of the Atlantic Hockey All-Academic team, he won a 2012 Katherine Wasserman Davis Fellowship for the Study of Critical Languages, awarded to students who demonstrate a potential for promoting peace on an international scale. He also won a 2012 Davis 100 Projects for Peace Grant, which is awarded for a service project that promotes peace. He earned a 2012-2013 Marshall Fund Grant for community development, awarded for student ambition to promote community development in Worcester. Reppucci also won a $10,000 Desmaris Scholarship for Academic and Community Leadership, a $6,000 Dana Scholarship for Academic Excellence and Leadership and a $3,000 McCarthy Scholarship for Exceptional Academic Achievement.
In addition, Reppucci was co-chair of the Hanify-Howland Memorial Lecture Committee; writer for the Telegram and Gazette’s Worcester Connects site; and summer 2013 intern at the U.S. Embassy in Manila, Philippines, for Harry K. Thomas Jr. ’78, former U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines.
This summer, before he begins his Fulbright, Reppucci will work at Save the Children alongside Mark Shriver ’86, senior vice president for strategic initiatives and senior advisor to the CEO, and, in August, will travel to Tanzania for a development project.
Each year approximately 1,900 U.S. college students are awarded grants through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. The Fulbright Program, the U.S. government’s flagship program in international educational exchange, awards grants to U.S. citizens and nationals of other countries for a variety of educational activities, primarily university lecturing, advanced research, graduate study and teaching in elementary and secondary schools. Since the program’s inception in 1946, more than 300,000 participants — selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential — have had the opportunity to observe each other’s political, economic and cultural institutions. The program operates in more than 155 countries worldwide.
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