Fall Community Service Brings Opportunities Galore

Lena Wang ’27 Campus Correspondent

On and off campus, and even all the way in Hartford, Hopkins students have been serving the community this past fall. Maroon Key, Hopkins’ largest student-run community service board, ran their annual Clothing Drive from September 30 to October 30, partnering with St. Luke’s Episcopal Church to replenish their clothing

closet.

On and off campus, and even all the way in

Hartford, Hopkins students have been serving the com-
munity this past fall. Maroon Key, Hopkins’ largest

student-run community service board, ran their annual

Clothing Drive from September 30 to October 30, part-
nering with St. Luke’s Episcopal

Church to replenish their clothing

closet. Outside of campus, Hop-
kins has extended its outreach in

the Greater New Haven area and
beyond. This fall has seen a new

wave of off-campus service op-
portunities for students, namely

in the form of off-campus routine
trips throughout Term 1 during

school hours. Even bigger ven-
tures have also been integrated

into the Hopkins community

service movement, such as over-
night trips all the way to Hartford,

where students offered hands-on
service to nearby locations of

organizations such as CT Food-
share and Levo International.

These service opportuni-
ties are meant to remind students

of their responsibilities to com-
munities on a larger scale than

just the Hopkins campus. Accord-
ing to Hopkins Director of Com-
munity Service Alissa Davis, “do-
ing actual hands-on volunteering [like this] is something

we build into all our trips in order to learn from non-profit
leaders and experts in the fields, so that we reflect, think,
and gain a better understanding about it. Students can
[then] get to really know the Greater New Haven area,
understand who our community is responsible to and that
we exist within a bigger ecosystem.” Davis hoped that
this understanding can foster relationships with these
non-profit organizations, emphasizing that “though we

can help others, [we can] also learn from others. We don’t
want service to be a one-way street, we want more of a
chance for reciprocal, long-term relationships to grow.”
During the first weekend of Thanksgiving break,
students embarked on the Fall Service Retreat – one of
the major trips of this fall. Davis said, “We started off

by heading down to CT FoodShare to sort cherry to-
matoes, where we ended up sorting around 50,000

pounds of them,” said Jamie Ganter ’27, a member of
the trip. “The day after, we went to a local church and

handed out cans of assorted non-perishable food to
the neighboring community. We also built hydroponic
farms for non-profit organization Levo International.”
Another Maroon Key service opportunity was
their clothing drive. It aimed to “benefit clothing insecure
individuals in the Greater New Haven community,” said
Liliana Dumas ’26, project manager of the clothing drive
and Maroon Key treasurer. Dumas contrasted this with
toxic charity, where one-way giving leads to an excessive
waste of clothing in foreign countries: “By donating to a

local organization, we make certain that clothes actually
help the local clothing insecure population rather than
polluting international beaches. We [also] want to ensure
that the Hopkins community actually builds relationships
with the organizations we help rather than just donating.”
These relationships allowed for the introduction

of service learning intensives during school hours, trans-
portation provided by Hopkins. “We’re running things

like Sunrise Cafe, where students can serve breakfast dur-
ing A block, [and] Fridge Haven, where kids are clean-
ing up a community refrigerator.”

Davis added that Maroon Key is
also “doing a sandwich-making
brigade during H block, and
preparing food for another soup
kitchen.” She noted her concerns

over the lack of time that stu-
dents have in their calendar to

participate in community service:
“I think sometimes it feels like

there’s some barriers in our cur-
rent schedule and in the calendar

that make it really hard to make
that service as central to our own
community as we really want it
to be.” The service trip was only
Ganter’s second involvement
with community service – prior to
it, his schedule hadn’t allowed for
much otherwise. His appreciation

for service thus heightened dra-
matically following the trip, es-
pecially with the firsthand experi-
ence: “Tangibly helping someone,

right then and there, really made
me feel like I was making a difference... it got me thinking
that this is something I should continue doing,” he said.
Davis hoped that participation in service can
be experienced by more students. Community service

participation ties Hopkins students with the larger com-
munity: “There’s a temptation to look at [community

service] by, say, number of hours,” Davis explained.

“Certainly, that’s fair, but that doesn’t capture every-
thing about what service is... the growth, understand-
ing and empathy [that students gain] is so much bigger.”

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Fall Community Service Brings Opportunities Galore