Editor's note: To mark the end of 2010, we though we'd take a moment to recognize a few people who have helped make Brookline a better community this year. But since our town is already rife with do-gooders and philanthropists, we wanted to focus some of the up-and-coming community players in Brookline, the ones who have appeared only recently on the scene and still found their own way to make a mark. Think there's somebody else we should highlight? It's not too late to write in and let us know.

When I first interviewed Seth Barrett about his new fix-it shop two years ago, the handyman-turned-businessman was so nervous he scribbled out his answers on a note card before I showed up, and then consulted it several times as we talked.

When I called him up the other day, Seth told me he simply had never had a reason to talk to with reporter, or have a "public persona" as he puts it, in his old life as a construction worker. He would go to do his job, wherever it was, got the work done and came home. But that all changed when he opened Village Green Renewal in a Davis Avenue storefront in 2008

"The store fosters relationships," he told me recently. "You get to meet people and find out what kind of cool thing they're doing."

These days, Seth is something like a behind-the-scenes architect of Brookline Village's quiet community network. He has a knack, as I've seen several times, for spotting people with good ideas and giving them what they need to make it happen.

"His feelings of civic responsibility are really pretty outstanding," said Chobee Hoy, owner of Chobee Hoy Real Estate and Brookline's most prominent philanthropist. "And he's got such follow-through. A lot of us—including me—from time to time, we get all these idea, and we mean it, and we really want to do it, but sometimes we get sidetracked.

"I've never seen Seth get sidetracked," Chobee told me. "I don't know how he does it, but he just does it."

If you ask Seth, he'll tell you he just keeps coming across people doing cool stuff and doing his best to help them out. Take the "Brookline Village" t-shirts he's has been selling out of his shop to raise money for Brookline charities. Seth first saw the shirts when an employee walked in wearing one, got in touch with the neighbor who was making them and soon found himself in the t-shirt business. He says he just "wanted the t-shirts to exist."

Something similar happened with Alejandro Sina, a neon glass artist who has kept a studio in Brookline Village for more than three decades but had never shown his work in his own neighborhood until Seth made it happen. The two met a few months ago somewhere in the neighborhood–Seth can't recall where or how—and Alejandro convinced him to come back to his studio, where Seth became a fast fan of his work. Seth reached out to Chobee Hoy, who then turned to the Korean Church of Boston and town officials, and soon Alejandro had his work displayed in a half-dozen storefronts on the neighborhood's busiest night of the year.

But Seth didn't stop there. After meeting the leaders of the Korean church, he decided to help them reach out to the community. He called me up, explained the situation and I agreed it was a good story. The result was this piece.

Over the last year, Seth has also done work at the Puppet Showplace Theatre, Coolidge Corner Theatre and Brookline Arts Center and helped with a major renovation effort at the Brookline Community Foundation. For most of these projects, he doesn't get his store's name plastered on sponsorship posters or listed in underwriter announcements. Most of the time, people probably don't even know he's involved. But there he is.

You might say these are not big things. But communities don't need big things to make them better; they just need people like Seth.

Here's how Chobee Hoy put it:  "When a person comes along who not only sees the need, but is also willing and able to do the work, that's a pretty remarkable combination."

"I see him as a real catalyst," she said.