By Deanna Shilkus
Service Club had one of its best Habitat for Hummanity trips this past summer, according to Service Club head Dave Jacobson. For a week, counselor Rachel Brill, Jacobson and 10 service club students spent their time in West Bend, Wisc. For three days, the group built a house for someone in need.
“I felt exhausted; it was definitely hard work,” senior Haley Pawlow said. The trip also included nights out in the town, where they attended a Milwaukee Brewers game.
The summer activties took up much of the time for service club students, but now as the fall rolls around and the start of a new school year, service club sign-ups are busy. According to Jacobson, the summer activity is nowhere near how busy the school year gets with Service Club committments. Every Wednesday in the commons, all students can come and sign up for upcoming projects. So far, there has been a great turnout, and slots fill up fast, Jacobson said.
As of Wednesday, Sept. 1, not many slots are left. According to Jacobson, the number of slots that fill up vary from week to week, and they continue on as long as there are still slots to be filled. If Jacobson puts new sheets out for sign-ups, there are more opportunities for kids to volunteer. After a few weeks, everything will be full and the Service Club year begins.
For years, ever since Jacobson has been in charge, Service Club has been able to schedule opportunites for kids to do service work through surrounding organizations. For example, the Holiday Food Drive in November and Adopt-A-Child in December are annual events for Service Club. They are both provided by CEDA, an organization that works in partnership with communities to help provide people with a better quality of life.
One of the biggest projects Service Club will be working on in September is Paint-A-Thon. Paint-A-Thon is a project where students spend two weekends prepping and painting someone’s house, somewhere in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago.
Paint-A-Thon begins with community members, who are in need of some housing maintenance or are having financial issues, apply to catholic charities and are selected to have their house painted. Service Club will go and paint one house out of 30 others that other volunteers sign up for.
Similarly to painting houses for Paint-A-Thon, the A-Ok project has students raking leaves and painting fences for people in need. Pawlow has never done this project before and she thinks that it sounds interesting.
“It’s something really active,” she said.
Along with projects, Service Club has decided to change how their communication works this year. Members will receive notes and information through email. Last year, Jacobson felt that trying to get notes out to everybody in their classes was a hassle, and that using email is more efficient.
“I was worried that no one would check their email,” Jacobson said, but when they tried it out for part of last year, it “worked out well.” So they will continue with the method this year.
When sign-ups die down, and projects get going, Service Club will be busy. But the best part Pawlow says, “is to see the people you are helping and how much happiness you [bring] them.”
