Community Service Learning Projects

Preparing for More Fundraising

dvining — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:49:48 +0000

January Blahs

As winter wears on, the community service learning group is looking ahead to late May. We have been working on preparing for our fundraising flea market and craft sale. This week we made tons of earrings in preparation for this event. The students enjoyed choosing beads and learning to put them together in creative ways to make interesting color and style combinations that will appeal to a wide range of people. We hope to sell all of them and donate the money to a local charity. Students are still undecided on which charity they would like to give to, but there is plenty of time left to choose.

In planning for our event we are not only making crafts, we will also be accepting donations of good quality items to sell. Again, all money we make will go to a local charity. After our bake sale fundraiser in the fall, students are more motivated than ever to make as much money as possible. I’ve included pictures of our earrings in this post so you can get a preview. We’re thinking of selling them for $1-$2 a pair. We hope that you will come to our flea market and craft sale; I’ll publish more specific information as the time draws near and as our plans get more solidified.

earrings we made

more earrings

Painting at ReSource

dvining — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 12:53:42 +0000

The community service group’s most recent project was to volunteer at ReSource in Burlington, Vermont. We helped them paint a part of their warehouse bright green to represent the Earth-friendly atmosphere of this non-profit organization. The students, only 1 of whom had actually ever painted before, learned quickly about how to paint walls and readily accepted feedback about their work to make sure they were doing the best job they could do. I was impressed by how helpful and friendly the students were and by how generous and friendly the employees of ReSource were to the students. The students showed a lot of teamwork, tenacity and independence and they made me very proud to have them be part of the group. If you are at ReSource in Burlington, Vermont, then be sure to compliment the painting job on the big green wall and let them know you support the work of the students at ONTOP.

Fundraising Project

dvining — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 13:28:15 +0000

This week three students in my community service learning group at the ONTOP Program decided that they wanted to raise funds to buy food for people in need. We decided to do a bake sale and Walmart was willing to let us have it there for 2 hours. The students also wanted to create a hand made project to sell, so they took some digital photographs and used photo editing software to enhance the pictures. Then they affixed the photos to cards to make a lovely item to sell.

some of the cards made by students

At the end of the fundraiser the students had raised over $90.oo and combining that with our food donations

they were able to bring over $125.oo worth of groceries

to the Salvation Army in Burlington.

some of the food we donated

I’m really proud of the work my 3 students did, and now they are even more eager to do fundraising projects in the future.

We all want to thank everyone who contributed to our fundraiser and food drive for their incredible generosity. Thank you!

What is Service Learning?

dvining — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 13:16:09 +0000

Throughout the course of the 2011-2012 school year I will be leading a small group of students in community service learning projects. They will be earning community service credit and they will also be learning about some of the community needs in the area.

Our first project is to put together a food drive to help aid Hurricane Irene relief efforts. Students are making flyers which have information on where to bring donations.