On Thursday, October 1, Choate students, staff, and faculty gathered in the Paul Mellon Arts Center (PMAC) for a special program in preparation for Choate’s annual Community Service Day. This special program included an introduction to William and Jennifer McNally, the founders of Harvest Pack; a preview of the movie Every Three Seconds, shown on Community Service Day; and a brief history of the origins of Choate’s Day of Service.
Choate’s community service initiative started with the Choate boys, long before The Choate School and Rosemary Hall merged. Choate would run an intercity summer camp for under-privileged children and would plant potatoes to provide food for people at war. This soon evolved into the first community service day in 1950. A fierce storm struck New England and devastated its inhabitants; many residents did not have heating, electricity, or in some cases, water. In response, the Choate boys were instructed to clean up the debris from the storm. Impressed by the dedication the boys showed toward the task, Mr. Charles Dey, the Choate headmaster at the time, decided to make community service day a yearly event. Shortly after came Project Day, in which students would complete various projects around campus, such as weeding or leaf raking.
In 1985, Student Council members from Choate, Mark T. Sheehan High School, and Lyman Hall High School collaborated on a collective effort to rake up leaves in Wallingford. However, the greatest problem with this kind of community service was its dependence on good weather conditions. A downpour of rain and snow would hinder any efforts to rake leaves outside, and as a result, in 1996, Choate realized that it needed a service day that didn’t rely on good weather. In 2013, Choate’s annual Community Service Day became a fixture in the calendar, with an overall goal to help educate the Choate community about hunger issues around the world and introduce the community to the benefits of packing meals and sending them to poverty stricken places. Choate originally worked on meal packing with Kids Against Hunger (KAH), but after KAH stopped meal packing and became more administrative, Choate switched its partner to Harvest Pack.
Headed by Director of Community Service, Ms. Mary Pashley, and an eager, committed group of students and faculty, the Community Service Day Committee collaborates with Harvest Pack , shows a movie about hunger to the community, and works to ensure that the goals and meal packing quota of the day are met. Community Service Day currently has a budget of almost $50,000, which is provided by Choate every year and also covers the cost of the meal packing ingredients.
On the transformation of Service Day through the times, Ms. Pashley remarked, “What we started out with was a great idea to help the local community exclusively . We were working with the parks and rec department and utility departments in town, and we were leaf raking for senior citizens within a walking radius of Choate. Although that was a good idea, the fact that it was weather contingent because it was all outside made for a difficult premise, we would spend hours of time preparing and planning, but if it rained or snowed we would have to cancel the event.”
Soon, service day was planned to be independent of the weather. Ms. Pashley continued, “At the time we were looking at community service day there were a lot of things going on in the world. There were typhoons, earthquakes in Haiti, and we felt that as a community we should really come together and try and reach out to those countries that needed our help.”
Ms. Pashley feels that the importance of the day can be reflected in the gathering of 1,200 volunteers consisting of staff, faculty, and students: “There is really no better event that brings together 1,200 people that benefits 150,000 people.”
Community Service Day Committee member Rebecca Bernstein ’16 hopes people will get involved in more community service in the future. “I think the point of the day isn’t just about packing the meals, but to inspire everyone on campus to get involved in community service. Obviously, we have the thirty-hour community service requirement here on campus, but I think people look at that more as a last-minute graduation requirement than something that’s actually really meaningful and really fun,” she said.
Bernstein added, “I think it’s really important that we put aside a day to do something that’s beyond the Choate bubble. Obviously education is about more than sitting down and memorizing formulas, dissecting organisms, or reading Shakespeare. We’re learning so much more in one day than we would be in a normal day of classes.”
