Paly’s Youth Community Service (YCS) Club completed its first successful service day in two years on March 25. The club’s goal was to get as much participation as possible especially from students outside of YCS.
"I was very happy about the turn out," YCS president junior Elaine Chen said. "Although it wasn’t a big group of people, I’m really excited that people were willing to go to it. Seeing that we haven’t done a Paly Service Day in two years, I’m impressed."
Most of the Paly service day participants were not part of the YCS Club, according to Chen. Many of the volunteers felt community service was a fun way to do something good for less fortunate people.
"It’s a good feeling to know you are helping someone who needs it and you are making your community better," freshman Alex Coblin said.
Junior Sara Itucas said, "I decided this would be a good thing to do and it would be fun at the same time."
Volunteers were asked to choose from five different sites when they signed up. There were a variety of sites and jobs, from spring cleaning at the Palo Alto chapter of the American Red Cross to planting a garden for an East Palo Alto charter school.
Vandana Godha, director of volunteer resources for the Palo Alto chapter of the American Red Cross, was greatful for Paly’s choice to help clean the offices of their headquarters. According to Chen, the supervisors at all the sites appreciated the help.
"It’s great because our budgets are so tight we can’t pay for a cleaning service," said Godha. "It is helpful to have students come here."
Community outreach coordinator for the Palo Alto chapter of the American Red Cross Christine Bishop said, "I don’t think you can imagine how great this is for us to have students come in. Youth volunteers are very important to us."
Paly has not had a service day the past two years, so it has been on the YCS Club’s to-do list since the beginning of the year, but the club did not start thinking about the details until January, according to club member junior Paula Wu.
"I was surprised by how smoothly it went," Wu said. "All the students knew what to do, we had ample support from parents and staff. Even the food was good."
The club was inspired by the success of Gunn High School’s service days in the past few years.
"We never really compared our service day to Gunn’s service day," Chen said. "For the past two years, we have always wanted to this a service day, but we couldn’t get it together. I guess it [the Gunn service day] did motivate us because their service day was a huge success, and we wanted that, too."
YCS leaders picked the volunteer sites that would be best for service day and the YCS staff followed up with the sites, organizing the transportation, publicity and other elements of the day by themselves, according to Chen.
Godha appreciated YCS Club’s organization and ability to follow through.
“I’m very impressed by [Paly’s YCS Club],” Godha said. “They approached me and organized all this. I didn’t really have to do anything.”
Next year YCS hopes to host a Paly service day during school to attract more students. A service day during school would conflict with many teachers’ schedules, so YCS has to get the event approved and on the school calendar early next year.
"It’s hard because teachers don’t want to give up their class time," Wu said. "If we did [have a service day during school] then we would have to get started planning soon. It would be really beneficial to have a service day during school because we would get people involved that would not do it otherwise. But it really depends on the teachers and the calendar."
As for sites for community service next year, the Palo Alto chapter of the American Red Cross would be glad to receive the help again.
"One of our mission statements is to be a volunteer-run organization," Godha said. "We would be very honored to be involved in [another Paly service day]."