Projects Preview: Insight of the Upcoming Senior Service Day

Senior Service Day this year is on Wednesday, Oct. 16. According to SHARE — East’s student-run community service organization — almost 86 percent of the senior class (in the past few years, it has been about an 85 percent involvement) has already signed up to participate in the annual event and they are expecting more to sign up. 

One thing that attracts seniors to sign-up, is that the seniors had many different options for the places they could volunteer for. Those who signed up for Adelante Thrift Store will help organize, sort, hang clothing and sweep the floors. For the Briarwood Elementary Project, seniors will open car doors at morning pick-up and help teachers in the classroom. Another project, Nourish KC, will have the morning shift do meal-prep and the afternoon volunteers serve those meals to KC’s homeless.

Although the day will be full of hard work, the goal is for seniors to feel accomplished in giving back to the community and make volunteering a habit.

Even with all of the seniors only doing a few hour-long shifts, they still make a huge impact together as a class. The students will be sent out all across Kansas City to perform a combined total of more than 1,200 hours of community service. 

“There’s just a variety of projects that serve different needs, different populations, so they can pick and choose what might interest them,” SHARE program coordinator Krissie Wiggins said.

Seniors are invited to Harmon Park either before or after their projects, depending on if they have an afternoon or morning shift, for a senior picnic.

The day begins with participating seniors reporting to East to check in before their shift — receiving a complimentary pick-me-up donut, provided by East. From there, the students who are working the morning shift of volunteering will disperse to their projects and begin working. Some of the projects have shifts in the morning, and the rest are in the afternoon. Each shift lasts from two to five hours. 

Senior Will Harding, one of the eight elected SHARE executives for this year, said Senior Service Day is a good way for students involved in National Honors Society (NHS) to get their required volunteer hours. However, the main goal is to give back to the community through service work and provide the seniors with a sense of compassion and respect for what they are doing.

In order to get as many volunteers as they can, SHARE has expanded their advertising and other platforms geared towards social media, like Instagram and through the daily announcements.

“We advertised it a lot by social media [and] we made T-shirts that we provide if you sign up,” Harding said. “It’s good for [people who don’t do SHARE] to kind of get out of their comfort zone and see what it’s like to volunteer.”

For the past four years, SHARE has had a team leader for each project to make the process more organized for the other seniors and the executives. This year, the leader sign-ups were first come first serve, along with the regular process of student sign-ups. 

According to Wiggins, the project team leader is the person they keep a line of communication with about their specific organization and can contact with any concerns. Having this leadership opportunity also encourages more seniors to put their name on the sign-up list to volunteer and to be in a leadership role.

The desired end result of the coordinators and people involved is for students to be content with the work they did and the impact they had on their community.

“It’s a happy, positive, feel-good day,” Wiggins said. “And everybody needs a little bit of that in their life.”