Whitman wraps up Week of Service

The Whitman Week of Service, which was held April 5 -12, featured roughly 20 service projects, from helping in a soup kitchen to tutoring underprivileged children to working on environmental projects. At least one activity was offered each day, making it easy for students to volunteer even with their busy schedules.

Whitman College Council civic engagement co-chairs Andrea Trubanova ’10 and Will Wagner ’10 organized the event in conjunction with the Student Volunteers Council (SVC).

Wagner and Trubanova said the idea for the week of service was originally brought up in a college council meeting. “All the residential colleges are trying to promote civic engagement and make people more aware of the community service opportunities that are out there ... and to get them outside of the Princeton bubble, so to speak,” Wagner said.

Logistically, a week of service also allowed students more flexibility to be able to participate. “Sometimes, it’s hard to just have one date, and people can’t make that,” Trubanova said.

On the first day of the service week, Tara Weigand ’11 worked in Trenton at the Martin House, an organization that supplies basic necessities to low-income families.

That day, she sorted donated clothing. She added that the Martin House also helps low-income families in other ways, such as constructing new homes and refurbishing existing ones. As with the clothing, the houses are sold at modest prices within the families’ financial means.

Weigand said she enjoyed her experience with the Martin House so much that she has since decided to continue working with the organization in the future.

Weigand particularly liked how easy it was to get involved. “Usually, in order to help out, you have to contact a bunch of different people, and it’s an effort just to volunteer,” she said. “This was an easier way to participate in the community.”

“By creating a service week, it brings the thought of volunteering to the minds of students and gives them an easy, commitment-free way to get involved,” she added.

Weigand noted that the enthusiasm of those coordinating the week of service contributed to the positive experience she had. She also said she believed that having a service week toward the beginning of the semester might be more effective, since students who enjoyed their experiences would have more time to continue volunteering.

Wagner and Trubanova served as liaisons between the student body and the SVC, publicizing service opportunities and refining the schedule of activities, while the SVC provided transportation and interacted more directly with the local organizations.

Both Wagner and Trubanova said the SVC was extremely helpful, which “made it that much easier to facilitate [the week of service],” Wagner said.

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Participating students represented all four class years, and some took part in more than one project.

Wagner and Trubanova said the week of service was successful in exposing them to the world of service opportunities in Princeton. “Some students didn’t know of some of the activities that the SVC is providing ... it was good for them to get a sense of the range of projects,” Trubanova said.

“It highlights the wide array of projects at Princeton that are going on, rather than embarking on a new direction necessarily,” Wagner added.

After receiving positive feedback from participants, Wagner and Trubanova are planning on making the service week an annual event that will spread to other residential colleges.

“We certainly hope that it’s a model that can be adopted all over,” Wagner said.