This week, for Helenes, we had an event called Service in the Park. We have the event once each semester. We set up a bunch of stations in one of the parks on campus, and anyone can stop by any of the stations to do a craft. All of the crafts that we make go back to the community. Some of the things we were making were notebooks for Jr. Helenes (high school students who we build relationships with as they figure out their future plans), alphabet books for a local elementary school, and making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the homeless. We also made bookmarks and water bottles!
The cool thing about this event is that anyone can really spend as much time as they want. It only takes a couple of minutes to make a sandwich or decorate a notebook, so one can just come by for 5 minutes. On the other hand, if you want to get really artistic, you can stay for a couple of hours! I ended up staying for about an hour this time. For the rest of the day, people were asking me about the leftover paint on my hands, and when I told them about Service in the Park, some of them actually went to participate!
Service has always been pretty important to me. Because it has such a minimal time commitment, it’s easy for anyone to give back a little bit at Service in the Park!
