SEOUL —Thanks to a local Boy Scout, expectant mothers at the Yongsan Garrison Stork’s Nest will be staying in a place that feels a little more like home.
Avery Weigle, 13, a Scout with Yongsan-based Troop 80, organized volunteers to paint the Stork’s Nest — a lodging facility where mothers-to-be from outlying military communities stay when waiting to give birth at Brian Allgood Army Community Hospital on Yongsan.
Avery organized the project to fulfill the community service requirement for attaining the rank of Eagle Scout — the highest Scouting rank.
He said he knows he’s starting the initiative early for the push to Eagle Scout, but thought this project was perfect.
"The opportunity came and I jumped at it," Avery said, adding that he got the idea from his mother.
Avery offered to paint the halls of a new building, but officials from the 65th Medical Brigade told him there was a greater need to paint the five bedrooms of the older Stork’s Nest — a converted barracks near Collier Field House.
Avery gathered 48 volunteers from base organizations including the Girl Scouts, the 65th Medical Brigade and the U.S. Embassy.
Combined, they volunteered 205 hours between Dec. 26 and Dec. 29 painting the rooms.
"I thought it was a great opportunity for people to come together and help the community," Avery said.
Stork’s Nest officials said they were grateful for the volunteers’ work.
"The first patients in there ... said it was a home away from home," said Stork’s Nest facility project manager Sgt. 1st Class Willard Hurst. "Avery and his Eagle Scout project, they took an old building and made it look new."
The Yongsan Stork’s Nest consists of two buildings, with a third slated to open in February, and houses expectant mothers who are at least 38 weeks into their pregnancies and live at least 30 minutes away from the Yongsan area.
Family members of surgical and pediatric patients also are eligible to stay, but priority goes to the pregnant women, Hurst said.
