07/30/2026
Congratulations to Team 2029 Midfielder Breckan Pelton! A true leader on and off the field!
Meet South Jefferson High School rising sophomore Breckan Pelton.
For Breckan, “community means having people you can rely on; friends and family all within a close distance.
“Mannsville isn’t just a place to grow up. This community always strives to take care of one another. It may be a small town in size, but it has a large heart,” Breckan wrote in his winning essay.
Breckan is a Northern New York Community Foundation Community Spirit Youth Giving Challenge winner. He chose the Mannsville Free Library to receive a $1,000 grant for its work and mission.
“In a small village like Mannsville, there aren’t many places for socialization with your friends. When I was younger, my sister and my friends and I would meet at the library, which was always welcoming and featured our book recommendations,” he wrote. “I hope this grant award will provide Mannsville Library the opportuni-ty to purchase new books and host new activities for children so they can have the same memories and expe-riences as I did.”
Breckan recently met with Mannsville Free Library Director Anne Fuller and presented a $1,000 Youth Giving Challenge grant that will help the library continue its work. The grant is made possible by gifts to the Friends of the Foundation Community Betterment Annual Fund, corporate support from Community Bank, N.A. and a major gift from an individual donor.
Pictured, from left: Anne Fuller, Mannsville Library director, and Youth Giving Challenge winner and South Jefferson High School rising sophomore Breckan Pelton.
We are grateful to Breckan for his thoughtful effort. We are even more impressed that he is one of dozens of tri-county youths who looked inside their communities to recognize an organization that works to improve quality of life. Breckan is the son of Shelbie and James Pelton, Mannsville.
The 2025-2026 Youth Giving Challenge asked seventh, eighth, and ninth-grade students from Jefferson, Lewis, and St. Lawrence counties to explain in an essay what community means to them and to choose a nonprofit that embodies their definition of community. Breckan’s essay is one of 20 chosen from nearly 80 submissions that came from 26 different tri-county schools.
Look for more photos and stories behind the Community Spirit Youth Giving Challenge in the coming weeks.
