According to Career Advisor Christina Owen, Paly Service Day will be divided into 12 off-campus field trips and 11 lunch-time, on-campus activities centering around numerous local, non-profit organizations including InnVision, Acterra and RAFT.
Students participating in one of the off-campus field trips will start their days early with a free breakfast at 7:45 a.m., which is open to all students, followed by a welcome from Owen and Student Activities Director Matthew Hall before boarding the buses to their various activities by 9 a.m. All students will return to school by 2 p.m. with reflections on their volunteering experience.
Service Day will also involve a raffle for family gift cards to Lyfe Kitchen and Howie’s Pizza for students who signed up before Tuesday, April 23.
The Paly-hosted activities will be held during lunch on the Quad and will be accompanied by a performance by Paly Rocks, a musical band club under Social Studies teacher Grant Blackburn. Students can participate in all of these activities and fundraisers without prior work except for recording for the Apple Tree Library Reading Project and building playhouses for Habitat for Humanity, which requires pre-registration and permission slips because it is a full day event.
For these activities, students can also “earn” free pizza for participating.
“If a student does a small project at a booth or brings a donation, they will get their hand stamped for a free slice of pizza,” Owen said. “We have enough pizza for 500 students, so hope to have a great turnout in the Quad that day.”
Owen added that out of the all the drives, the most prominent drive is for Neighbors Helping Neighbors, a “group helping needy families in midtown Palo Alto.”
Overall, Owen hopes the day will allow students to participate in contributing to causes greater than themselves, an important life skill.
“The purpose of Paly Service Day is to connect our students to the world around us,” Owen said. “Service to the community is one of the 41 Developmental Assets that our district embraces, to help young people thrive.”
Besides the obvious benefits of earning community service hours (six for those students going on one of the 12 field trips) for Living Skills, their transcripts or the President’s Award, Owen emphasized the “bigger picture” behind Service Day and volunteering in general.
“When students step outside themselves and the limited world of the high school environment, they make valuable connections to the causes they care about,” Owen said. “This connection can lead to many things, including direction to make purposeful high school plans and opportunities for internships, mentorships and other valuable extracurricular activities.”
Owen cited her own experiences volunteering at the El Camino Hospital as a high school student.
“[My experience] helped me to make friends outside of school, to pursue my interests and to feel good about improving other people’s lives,” she said.
To watch a promotional video by Sophia Pino about Paly Service Day 2013, click here.
Christina Owen • Apr 27, 2013 at 6:31 am
Some clarification to the food drive: Students bring 2 cans OR 1 bag rice OR 1 box cereal to earn 1 slice pizza. Double your donation for 2 slices of pizza. Combine a food donation with a project at one of the booths, earn up to 2 slices of pizza per student. Neighbors Helping Neighbors is the recipient organization for the food drive, and they are desperate for donations at this time of year. They especially requested beans for the canned food item. Beans, or canned meats will be most appreciated!