During assemblies and at various points throughout the year, Alex Zeka ‘25 would make announcements about the different drives and other events that the Service Council was hosting. I remember, in particular, the Military Drive, where he seemed almost to be begging students and faculty to participate and bring in various items for the military boxes. He even brought Mr. Ford, one of Springside Chestnut Hill’s math teachers, who is a veteran, to help encourage people to bring in supplies for the boxes and to share his experience with this type of drive. These moments stood out to me because it felt like the service council was doing everything possible to engage the community, yet not many advisors participated in the drives. This made me start to wonder why people so rarely get involved in service drives.
Participation among students and faculty often falls short when it comes to involvement in Service Council drives, despite announcements and efforts to engage people. Service Council has organized several drives, like the Winter Clothing Drive, the Thanksgiving Canned Food Drive, the Blood Drive, the Military Drive, and more, in which a few people participate, especially the ones that Service Council predicts will receive the most participation. The advisories that usually attract the most participation are those with Service Council members or their advisors, such as Ms. Zalasky or Ms. Zeka, SCH science teachers, and teacher advisors for the Service Council. “Most of the drives are run through advisory,” says Ms. Zalasky. “Service council makes slides to advertise which drives are occurring, and then the advisors help navigate the collection of donations.”
Before Thanksgiving break, Service Council held their Thanksgiving Canned Food Drive, and during the announcement, one of the presidents said that if your grade bought the most amount of cans, they would receive star points. This stood out to me because they don’t usually give things out for bringing in goods for Service Council drives, and it was like they were trying to boost the interest of students to bring in canned goods. Ms. Zalsky explained to me how, “In the past, our drives have been supported by student interest, and our leaders last year and the prior year were interested in a drive for the military. Also, there has been a great local need this year for food, so we have focused many of our drives on food and blood donations as well as warm clothes.” To me, this part wasn’t surprising because of what happened in the fall of last year with the government shutdown and growing concerns around SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program).
Talking with Service Council faculty advisors really helped me see how people get engaged with the different dives that they host. Drives are student interest-run and depend on what the leaders want to participate in, so if the leaders are really passionate about a cause or a drive, they’ll participate in it vs. something that they’re not all in for. So, for instance, last year Alex Zeka and Ava Lanzetta ‘25 were interested in the military drive, but this year the presidents decided not to partake in it. “Our food drive typically brings in the most donations, and our blood drives have consistently been fully booked,” says Ms. Zalasky. “This year, the warm clothes drive seems to have the lowest number of donations.”
Service Council doesn’t just participate in drives that get shown to the public; they also participate across the ECC (Early Childhood Center), Lower School, Middle School, People do community service tutoring for a sports credit, and they also support different drives that some of our Service Council members are a part of. “We support the MIT Foundation, Chloe Hanson ‘26, who’s one of our heads. She has, like, a very good tie with it. And then we also support Sarah Smiles, which is a smile. It’s like an organization that works with kids that have cancer, children’s, that Addison Rhodes ‘26, our other head, she is affiliated with that organization. So we do that,” says Ms. Zeka.
What I didn’t understand was why certain drives, for example, the Winter Clothing Drive, always felt bear compared to drives like Food or Blood Drives. What I realized later on was how people may not get involved because they’re involved outside of school. People in our school community aren’t just affiliated with in-school drives, but also out of school one’s aswell. So things like giving away old clothes to different charities may explain why the Winter Clothing drive might not be as popular in participation as the food or blood drives. People are probably participating in those because they don’t really do it outside of school.
Those moments from assembly announcements really stuck out to me then, but getting the broader picture of what Service Council actually does and getting many different perspectives helped. Service council is always looking for more donations, regardless of whether you participate in school or outside. “We would love larger participation in all drives! And having more students sign up for the Blood Drive would be awesome! Donors can be as young as 16 years old!” exclaims Ms. Zalasky.
