Service is known as a noble cause, taken up by many to improve major aspects of our world. But service can take the smallest of forms, attainable by small efforts that compound into massive effects. Service is a way of giving back to the universe that has given us so much, serving not only our surroundings but ourselves.
It is well known that the holiday season is the season of giving, with celebrations such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Diwali, and many more.
One less well-known celebration is that of GivingTuesday, which is, according to GivingTuesday.org, a “global generosity movement unleashing the power of people and organizations to transform their communities and the world.”
On campus, service comes alive during this season. From the Can Drive to the Turkey Drive, the entire school works together to do their part for the community. Though Haverford does not have a service-hour requirement, it emphasizes service learning.
One of the main methods of giving back to the community is the Can Drive, run by the service board, which is headed by Director of Service Learning Ms. Jini Loos.
“We’ve been doing the Can Drive for over 35 years,” Ms. Loos said. “We used to do it in partnership with Episcopal Academy, and it used to be a huge competition and so on. We would bring in easily 10,000 to 13,000 cans.”
Unfortunately, this year’s turnout was lackluster.
“This year was a light year. So we’re going to look at the way in which we present it to the community. We had a meeting to brainstorm different ideas and ways that we can get that message to the community to get them a little more enthusiastic,” Ms. Loos said.
“I know that kids like dress-down days and pizza parties, and I appreciate that, but I struggle a little bit with the whole idea that people need incentives to do something good.”
This idea that service is a transaction may be something hindering students’ ability to give back to the community.
“I think students need to be mindful of what it is that we’re trying to do,” Ms. Loos said. “It’s not about the competition, it’s about all the people we’re feeding.”
Ms. Loos and the service board have a plan for this year surrounding hunger and poverty.
“The idea is that this year we are working on a theme of bringing funds and awareness to issues of hunger and poverty and homelessness, which will culminate with our Empty Bowls event in the spring,” Ms. Loos said. “And the money that we raise for that will go to our hunger partners, and the Can Drive kicks that off as well.”
“The middle school donated their cans to Saint Barnabas Mission for homeless mothers and their children, and their cupboard was completely bare. Our guys filled their cupboard, so that’s a great feeling for everyone.”
Director of Service Learning Ms. Jini Loos
The school does build service into the learning system, starting in lower school, to establish a mindset of giving and awareness.
“In the lower school, they do graphing and sorting, and so they build it into their math program, which is service learning, putting their learning into action,” Ms. Loos said. “You have the student council running it in the middle school. This was a lighter year for them as well, but, you know, every bit we get is appreciated, and I got great responses from the people who donated.”
Sometimes, it helps students to know the people and organizations their donations are directly benefiting.
“The middle school donated their cans to Saint Barnabas Mission for homeless mothers and their children, and their cupboard was completely bare,” Ms. Loos said. “Our guys filled their cupboard, so that’s a great feeling for everyone.”
The Can Drive is not the only large service event during this time.
“The Turkey Drive will donate to Project Home, which provides Thanksgiving dinners to the homeless, for about 2500 people. We feel the more people that are involved, the better a response we get,” Ms. Loos said.
Fifth Form Service Board Co-President Ian Rosenzweig explains how the message of the Can Drive is communicated to the student body.
“We have the big upper school assembly, which is the first day of EA Week and also the Can Drive kickoff, so what we really try to do with that is to spread the message of why what we’re doing with the Can Drive is important. We share statistics about hunger, we share information about the impact that we’ve had in the past, and we talk about our partners,” Rosenzweig said.
“I also tried to tie it into the EA Week spirit. The Can Drive is also something that EA does or has done in the past, so it’s something that we’re all doing together even in a time of rivalry,” Rosenzweig said.
Despite the unfortunate turnout of cans, the Service Board feels like they can modify a few strategies for this event.
“The student body at Haverford at that time was not as inclined to donate cans,” Rosenzweig said. “A possibility could be that the incentives offered are not incentivizing enough, and another thing we’ve talked about is that it’s possible that our kickoff gets lost in the EA Week fanfare, so we’ve discussed moving the kickoff to a week earlier.”
One factor may be that not all students see service in the same light. Often, smaller donations can be overshadowed by larger ones, a phenomenon that Ms. Loos has seen firsthand.
“Kids would see that and then you would think, ‘Oh, that’s so great because of how many people it feeds,’ but for the kids who can only bring in one or two cans, they feel like ‘why bother?’” Ms. Loos said. “We try to thank everybody because a can of soup feeds a family of four in some communities.”
Ms. Loos also offers a variety of anecdotes that could help change the stigma around service, especially at Haverford.
“The lacrosse team does holiday bags for the Ardmore House, which is a low-income senior center. When I say to kids that hunger and poverty and those struggles are more local than we realize, that’s exactly what I mean,” Ms. Loos said. “I’m a strong believer in breaking that ‘us and them’ mentality, and when people say it’s a hand up or a hand down, I say it’s hands together, supporting each other.`”
Service has a ripple effect. While it may not seem like small donations do much for the greater cause, these donations often bring hope or joy to a few people in need, and can sometimes spark ideas in others to make long-lasting change.
“A couple of years ago, I took a group of students to New Mexico to present at the National Service-Learning conference. We had a relationship we had built up for about six years with this school in Uganda, and we sent all kinds of things to them from sports equipment to books. It was all student-driven too,” Ms. Loos said. “There was a woman who kept raising her hand, asking all kinds of questions, and at the end she asked the students if they would sit down with her and brainstorm a little bit. She had this idea for this project about water she wanted to do but she didn’t know if it was viable.” “The next year I went to the conference again, and she was there, and was setting up an exhibit,” Ms. Loos said. “The exhibit was for a project called H2O for Life. So I went up to her and said, ‘It’s so great to see you! You might not remember me, but my name is Jini Loos and I attended this conference with my students last year.’ And she said, ‘remember you?’ This program exists because of you and your students! Your students gave me the confidence to believe this could happen.’ They formed this program, H2O for Life, and it’s now in 125 schools worldwide.”
