Lef photo by Pinn Chirathivat/The Choate News, Top right photo by Audrey Powell/ The Choate News, Middle right photo by Derek Ng/The Choate News, Bottom right photo courtesy of Ross Mortensen
Last Friday, October 12, students and faculty participated in Choate’s sustainability-themed Community Service Day, with people working in different locations across campus, the town, and New Haven County.
The event’s new focus brought many changes, most of which were met with positive feedback. Ms. Melissa Koomson, Director of Community Service, stated, “Overall, I am quite pleased with how the day went. I think it was very well received — I have really heard nothing but positive things about it. People seemed to have a lot of fun and enjoyed themselves.” Many students voiced that they had liked getting more hands-on with their activities and being closer to the community that their work was impacting. Students also favored the theme of the day, and thought that its alignment with an important aspect of the School’s mission was beneficial.
“Community Service Day was a great way to bring students and faculty together to take a moment and admire the physical space in which we live — whether that be Choate or in New Haven County. Personally, I felt that the work I did on Friday reminded me of my own responsibility to the community and strengthened the connection that I have with Choate’s campus,” stated Blanca Payne ’20.
PJ Sethbhakdi ’20 enjoyed that the service extended beyond Choate’s boundaries: “I also really liked the idea of expanding to other places than the school campus. I hope that we can continue to work with the Wallingford and New Haven community.”
On how the theme of sustainability actually impacted the events of the day, Ms. Koomson said, “My whole thing about community service is really getting in there and rolling up your sleeves and getting dirty, and kids really got to do that, alongside faculty and staff. I really made sure that the sites and services that we do are in line with what our service guidelines are, with regards to providing opportunities for students to give back and check their privilege and place in the world.”
The day was largely a success, however, there were some student concerns about aspects of the event. Ms. Koomson addressed these thoughts, including the distribution of emails for activity assignments. She said, “Just a couple days before the event, there was a delay in getting the emails out to students. We had to try to get the programs to pull the right information to share, to put it into an email to send to students individually. But it certainly was not the end of the world.”
Students also expressed their feelings about their productiveness. Sunny Sun ’20 said, “Honestly my community service day was not that effective but I enjoyed it. My teacher organized some games while we waited for people from land trust to come and that was the best part. But I mean, this is shorter than last time, and also we got to work outside. Plus, we did all the work as dorms instead of being randomly assigned, which I thought was better than last year.”
Ms. Koomson emphasized the importance of seeing the bigger picture when doing service work and how beautification has the potential to impact people’s spirits. She referred to the work done in Prayer garden and Arch Street green spaces in New Haven: “It just makes such a difference to the people there and if that’s the little bit of joy you can bring to somebody, I just feel like that’s invaluable. I really hope that people can take away those messages. I feel like it can then build into something bigger. For example, the value of removing invasive species is to have native growth and to let native growth bloom and to create green space in city living.”
Despite minor obstacles, many felt that the work they completed throughout the day was gratifying and sensed that they had actually made a change. “Community service day was an amazing experience,” said Tilden Jackson ’21. “I know that we helped the community and all the gardeners that use that garden. They were really appreciative and I feel like the goal of sustainability was achieved because we were able to support a sustainable practice that is used by the community.”
Other groups felt that the effects of their service had been noticeable as well. Ms. Koomson stated, “Even just within the past 24 hours, driving by North Main Street extension, which is a location where a group did community clean-up, I could totally see the difference.” She continued, “There’s also a group that was removing undesired growth of some sort at the KEC. It was some gardening project that Mr. Scanio had them doing, and the before and after pictures are intense. It’s such a difference, the work that they did.”
“I felt really uplifted after it was all said and done. People were kind and supportive throughout. There was a huge team behind the scenes that was working for months and months and months to pull this together. Just absolute gratitude to all of them and people’s willingness to be flexible and do what needed to be done,” said Ms. Koomson.
