Community Service
RCDS students are involved in a variety of service projects, both face-to-face and charitable fundraising, throughout the year. RCDS offers age-appropriate volunteer opportunities, coordinated across divisions by a full-time Director of Community Service. Representative projects include promoting ecological awareness, visiting nursing homes and collecting blankets, coats, and toys for various charities. In the Middle School, students participate in Community Service projects in all grades. Typical efforts include making lap blankets for wheelchair patients In partnership with the Upper School's Linus Committee, fighting breast cancer through Middle School GOPiNK, fighting lung cancer through the new Lung Cancer Awareness Club in the Middle School, joining the Awareness Club, and participating in the St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital Math-A-Thon. Both Lower and Middle School students participate each year in Hoops and Jump Rope for Heart. In addition, all students in Grade 8 participate in specially scheduled Service Days during the school year, working at a variety of nonprofits in the local area.
Senior Term is a graduation requirement. During their final two weeks of the school year, all seniors participate in full day, small group service projects for several organizations in Westchester, Fairfield and the Bronx. These projects are initiated and planned by the students themselves, subject to faculty approval. Representative Senior Term service sites for 2010 included East Harlem Little League, Girl Scouts Heart of the Hudson, Federated Conservationists of Westchester, Mamaroneck Community Action Program, WestHELP Greenburgh, A.C.L.U., Guiding Eyes for the Blind, Mount Kisco Child Care Center, Edith G. Read Wildlife Sanctuary, Rye Nature Center, Purchase Community House, Jay Heritage Center, Friends of Austic People, Marshlands Conservancy, and Adopt-a-Dog.
In 2011 Rye Country Day appointed a Public Purpose Director to extend and deepen its Community Service program.
Read more about this topic: Rye Country Day School
Famous quotes containing the words community and/or service:
“Commitment, by its nature, frees us from ourselves and, while it stands us in opposition to some, it joins us with others similarly committed. Commitment moves us from the mirror trap of the self absorbed with the self to the freedom of a community of shared values.”
—Michael Lewis (late 20th century)
“The masochist: “I send my tormentor hurrying hither and thither in the service of my suffering and desire.””
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)