Community Service Leadership Board gives students more service opportunities

By Maya Wernick, Voices Editor|October 28, 2016

Photo credit: Anika Bhavnani

Maren O’Sullivan ’18, Sandy Frank ’19, Eden Motzkin ’19, and Maddie Jacobson ’19 pose at their booth for the Found Animals Foundation at the 2016 Community Service Fair. This booth was for the “Adopt&Shop” program at the foundation.

While the goal of all community service is to donate your time to people who need it, Archer’s community service leaders have plans to take this even further.

Alyssa Gogesch, the faculty advisor for Archer community service and the Community Service Leadership Board, described the new focus for service at Archer this upcoming school year.

“My goal for community service this year is for all of the students at Archer to be inspired to do community service, not for some sort of quota, like hours, but to really want to take something that they have extra of, like time or resources, and share it with people who need that,” Gogesch said.

Archer began to shift away from the quota of hours during last year’s transition to community service credits. This year Gogesch wants community service to be even more student driven.

The Community Service Leadership Board consists of three students per grade in the upper school.

Macoy Ohlbaum ’18, a member of the leadership board, explained her goals for this year, saying she wants to help people find their passions and pursue them.

“We give them a few starting points,” Ohlbaum said. “Whatever they’re interested in, we can help provide them with specific organizations that they can go to pursue.”

Dia Military ’17, another member of the board, said that Archer has even eliminated the requirement of credits for students in sixth through ninth grade.

Military echoed Ohlbaum’s  goal to make service less of a requirement and more of a passion-driven activity.

On Oct. 21, Archer held its second annual community service fair. At the fair, over 20 Archer girls had booths so they could advertise, promote and share their community service passions.

“You get to see your classmates in a different way [at the fair] because they’re showing what they’re interested in outside of school,” Military said.

The goal of the fair was to showcase all of the different organizations that Archer girls volunteer with, in order to hopefully get others to do the same.

“Through girls being able to see all of the great service opportunities that other girls at Archer have taken, they’ll be inspired to do more as well,” Gogesch said.