Students and Faculty Work Together on Day of Service

Upper School students and teachers dispersed across the Philadelphia area on October 6, 2006 for the ninth annual Upper School Day of Service. More than 500 volunteers pitched in at more than 20 sites, painting, cleaning up parks and trails and play areas, tutoring and serving meals at soup kitchens.

The morning began with an inspirational message by Danielle Floyd OPC '97, who supervised the recent opening of four public high schools in Philadelphia. "Your service gives you an opportunity to identify a void and fulfill the needs of others throughout Philadelphia," Floyd told the students before they began.

Drawing on her own experience with the School District of Philadelphia, Floyd cautioned that community service is a not a one-day activity but a lifelong pursuit. "This work doesn't get done in a day. And it's hard," she said. "It's hard to champion a movement, advocate for a cause, and advance a mission. And unfortunately our reality is that the work is never done. However, I believe there is an instinctive quality in all of us that drives us to seek out inequalities and take an active role in fighting for justice."

At Whosoever Gospel Mission in Germantown mathematics teachers Brian McCloskey and Dan Hajjar worked with students to clear away debris from a fire that destroyed the mission last spring. Students and teachers lent a hand in every classroom of the Bayard Taylor Elementary School, helping with math and reading. At Historic RittenhouseTown, students pulled weeds and invasive plants, and helped with clean up and a mailing. And at the Sedgwick Theater on Germantown Avenue, which is currently in use as a warehouse for the Northwest Philadelphia Interfaith Hospitality Network, a Penn Charter crew helped clean and inventory donations.

James Ballengee, director of Service Learning at Penn Charter, said students and teachers also worked at: Friends of the Wissahickon, MANNA, Aid for Friends, Philabundance, Frankford Group Ministry, UrbanPromise, Widener School, NTR Computer Thrift Store, Chamounix Stables, SHARE and the Salvation Army.

As he does each year on the morning of the Upper School Day of Service, Ballengee sent the students forth with these words from William Penn: "True Godliness does not turn men out of the world, but enables Them to live better in it, and excites their endeavors to mend it."