Copyright keenesentinel
WINCHESTER — Last Saturday afternoon, Natalie Quevedo was atop the roof of her old Winchester farmhouse molding chicken wire for what would become the top of a giant patriotic pickle. After doing this from the height the roof afforded her, she then spent the next week coating the several-foot frame in foam and painting it green. Like a lot of Quevedo’s projects and pursuits, getting the veggie up to snuff for the likes of Uncle Sam was something for the children she works with at Winchester ACCESS. Come this weekend, a group of them was slated to march behind the pickle at Winchester’s annual Pickle Festival. For about a year, Quevedo — “Miss Nat” if you’re one of her students — has been the program director of the town-funded summer camp and K-8 after-school program, which gets its moniker from the phrase “All Children, Cared for, Educated, Supported, & Successful.” For Quevedo, 42, doing things for the community is just who she is. “That’s really it, like making a giant pickle or literally doing stuff with the kids. Their haunted house comes up after the giant pickle. So that’s me, every single day.” Of the 55 kids the program currently serves, many struggle with food and housing insecurity and some amount of trauma in their lives, Quevedo said. In addition to fostering a fun and caring environment for the children, she’s also trying to instill in them the importance of kindness. Though she’s not a trained educator nor does she have a degree in the field, as long as she’s working on this with the kids, Quevedo is confident in her ability in the role. A self-proclaimed life-long-learner, she could soon find herself in the student’s seat — she hopes to begin working toward a doctorate in adolescent psychology. “I want to do as much as I can for the kids,” she said. Quevedo has also given her time to the town in other ways since moving there in 2019. She served on the selectboard for three years starting in 2022, and has run to be a state representative twice, but hasn’t decided yet if she will try for a third time. “I think I could help Winchester more,” she said. “… I see the town is so underserved, and the laws that they keep passing just keep making it worse for us.” As an example, she noted the expansion of Education Freedom Accounts, or state vouchers that help guardians pay for private schools and religious schools, as well as for homeschooling. Proponents say the program offers educational alternatives for students who might not do well in public schools, whereas opponents often argue it siphons badly needed funding from public education. Quevedo said adding a sales and income tax would help education funding too, as would legalizing recreational marijuana. “And take that tax revenue and give it towards education.” A civic spirit Quevedo’s patriotic pickle project likely benefitted from the couple of years she spent studying art at the Pratt Institute in New York City and her background in construction. She’d worked in the male-dominated field as a teenager and for most of her adult life before switching to ACCESS about a year ago. She found a niche in the field working for solar companies, and has worked for several, she said. When she wasn’t working, Quevedo was participating in protests for LGBTQIA+ rights, including marriage equality. Community involvement was something she learned when she was young. Quevedo, who grew up in Nutley, N.J., said her drive to engage with her town has roots in an experience from childhood. “Growing up, my parents took me to a, what they call Catholic charismatic church that was actually formed by a bunch of hippies that loved Jesus but also wanted to be civically engaged,” Quevedo recalled. She helped out as much as she could, and participated in different civil rights groups, feeding unhoused people and performing random acts of kindness. Quevedo said she’s particularly fond of the latter. ‘Living the kid life’ Since moving with her wife, Lola Bobrowski, to the region in 2012, and then to Winchester in 2019, Quevedo has brought that spirit of community engagement to the area. Before taking on her current role at ACCESS about a year ago, Quevedo served on the board. Once the opportunity to become more directly involved presented itself, she took it. “They needed help, so I just kind of stepped into it because I was helping anyway,” she said. “It made sense. I’m a lot less stressed now.” Now, Quevedo happily heeds the call, “Miss Nat, Miss Nat, Miss Nat,” from one kid after another. Quevedo said she was all in when the role opened. Though it can be difficult to see the kids struggle, she said she feels so fulfilled in the position. “It’s just you get one little kid that comes up and gives you a hug out of nowhere, that’s all you need.” Bobrowski, who also works at ACCESS with Quevedo and several other staff members, said Quevedo’s “extreme level of patience” makes her good with the kids. “And the way that she interacts with them. She’s someone that brings sort of like a slower pace to things,” she added. “We have this running joke that she is always living the kid life … She always has had, like, this really unique attachment to her inner child, and so I think she brings that a lot to them, but also she’s really good at giving them sort of a safe space, to feel their feelings and talk through them.” Quevedo always wears a yellow hat with a bumblebee on it to stress to the kids to “bee kind.” In addition to helping children with their homework and helping them grow more confident in themselves and their abilities, she does other fun activities with them. Over the summer, she took the kids in the summer camp program to Monadnock Berries in Troy, and she takes campers on an outing she calls “Miss Nat’s Challenge” — a 10-mile hike. “They only did 6. We ran out of time this year because we stopped and [were] looking at mushrooms.” It’s not just about keeping the kids engaged. The ACCESS program is also meeting basic needs. “Those kids want to eat, I feed them,” she said. “We cook more on purpose,” she said, because children have said they’re still hungry. In addition to filling up her students’ tummies, she said she’s also sure to care for their emotional needs. Quevedo said she and Megan Pouliot, the Winchester School principal, have a good working relationship and talk daily. If Quevedo gets a call that one of her students is having a bad day, she makes sure to ask them about it when they come to the after-school program, and extends a helping hand. She wants to expand the program in the region, she said. “My hope is to build the program into a 24-hour brick and mortar, that will also serve ... as an emergency facility for kids that are displaced,” she said. Offering overnight support is another goal, she said, in case parents need a place for their children to stay if they’re, say, working overnight. For Quevedo, there’s no shortage of memorable moments working at ACCESS. “I get one of those every day,” she said. “My one yesterday was just a little, little kid, just randomly, three times in a row, just came up and just hugged me. Like, just, ‘Thank you, Miss Nat’ … It makes you want to cry.”
