Raking for a Reason!

I am back to my community service theme. Being a Service Scholar on campus I spend a lot of my time during the week volunteering already, but I also dedicate free time to events that I know benefit the community service club that I am involved with as well, SWAV (Students with a Vision). I had talked about our E-Board trip to the Mohawk Community in one of my earlier posts, but SWAV is always doing great things on and off campus. This past weekend was another one of our leaf raking extravaganzas! We rake professor’s yards to raise money for our biggest event of the year, which is PCC or Project Community Convergence. This project involves going into city schools and painting walls new, bright, and exciting colors, so that the school children are in an environment that is new, bright, and exciting (exactly what the new paint job represents). However, in order to do a big project like this there are two huge factors that we need: volunteers and money for supplies. Volunteers at St. John Fisher College are easier to come by, because community service is a large part of the overall mission. Money on the other hand is a little bit harder to raise. Events like leaf raking, especially in harder economic times, are crucial to making sure that we are still able to paint the schools. If we have to work harder and longer to raise the money for this project, then that is what we will do. Thank goodness for the professor’s that open up their yards to our awesome raking skills, because they too represent how St. John Fisher College supports that chain reaction of donating money to causes that in turn will help the community; they add to the quality of our school with their generosity and caring attitudes. Small groups of people really can make all the difference in the world. Hey, I even got to break a sweat and get a day of fresh air too! I couldn’t ask for anything better than that.

Lindsey