Teens use scavenger hunt to help community

Bennington — If you ask Rachel Lee, she will tell you the benefits of social media and mobile phones. The 13-year-old Shahala Middle School student won a laptop thanks in part to those two things. Lee was part “The ’Couve,” a team her older sister Kaitlyn formed that joined more than 70,000 other teens in an 11-day scavenger hunt sponsored by DoSomething.org. Each day, the team received a challenge to make a difference in their community via text message, social media or email. Besides team activities, there were individual challenges as well. One was collecting and donating school supplies to Staples. Because she was the first to complete this challenge, Lee won the daily individual prize — the laptop. Other challenges the ’Couve took were recycling, writing to troops, posting educational materials on Facebook and walking somewhere instead of driving.