Community Service Up Tos

By Erica Steen, Director, Morris Cafritz Center for Community Service

What we’ve been up to:We’ve had a busy summer so far, including four weeks of camp–three weeks for high school students and one for middle-school students. The four weeks took a lot out of us, but we think the students learned a bit, and so did we.

One of our favorite days of camp was volunteering with Street Sense and their Vendor-for-a-Day program. Our group paired up with local vendors (you’ve seen them on the DC streets wearing highlighter yellow vests) to help them sell their Street Sense papers. Our students are neither homeless nor hungry, but they truly got to experience what it might be like).

Students stood on the corners in their borrowed yellow vests hocking the paper: “Help the homeless; only $1” or “Buy Street Sense, a paper written by the homeless, only $1.” The students noticed many business people answered cell phone calls without the phone ringing, crossed the streets to avoid them, or just looked away. We also had people donate money and not take the paper, pay $5 for an issue (opposed to the suggested $1) and (our favorite) people who stopped to ask questions about who we were and why were selling the paper (since we didn’t seem homeless). Over the three sessions with Vendor-for-a-Day we raised over $400. It was an amazing experience for all of us.

The next time you see a Street Sense vendor on the street, buy a paper, it makes a difference.

What we will be up to: We’ve got a new volunteer project this month that you should register for! We’re going to volunteer with Common Good City Farm (CGCF). They are an amazing community garden in LeDroit Park. We’ll begin July 31, and in August we’ll be going on the 4th Sunday evening of each month. Volunteers will help the staff with whatever’s needed everything from picking the weeks harvest to helping teach a class on healthy eating. We will be at the mercy of the CGCF staff, but it will be a good time no matter what! But don’t take our word for it…the CGSF has the endorsement of the Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships and the Prince of Wales.

How you can be a part of what we’re up to: It’s easy; just visit our website to see all of our upcoming volunteer projects!

Other UP TOs…we’re on Twitter at VolunteerDCJCC and in September and October we’re doing a sock drive, drop NEW socks off at the JCC front desk and we’ll make sure they get a good home.