“Exhausted” was how Camille Joseph Varlack described feeling after the first two days of this year’s Somos conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico. New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ chief of staff was among the first attendees to show up early Friday morning for the day of service. After the programming, workshops, receptions, networking, parties and discussions into the early morning hours, Joseph Varlack and others looked surprisingly rested and ready to give back to the island community. “I mean, this is what matters,” she told City & State, as volunteers boarded a bus for Cataño.

A tent was set up along the waterfront in the town 10 miles west of San Juan for a food and backpack giveaway hosted by Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, in partnership with The New York Foundling.

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