Here’s yet another entry in our continuing series on young people who are NOT driving around drunk, joining gangs or otherwise irritating the general populace, and who are, in fact, making a positive contribution to the community.
Volunteer explosion
District 214 started offering students the chance to get extra credit for community service last school year, and the program, while generally successful districtwide, has snowballed at Elk Grove High School.
Elaine Bond, the school’s service learning coordinator, bragged that Elk Grove High has more student volunteers logging more hours than all the other District 214 high schools combined.
Six hundred students performed 15,000 hours of community service during the fall semester. She hopes to get enough involved-about 800, or half the student population-to reach the 50,000-hour mark by the end of the school year.
She pointed to the essential combination of support the program has gotten around town: school administrators who let kids out of class when necessary; parents who drive younger kids to their projects; and community groups who have cooperated with the logistics and organization.
Bond pointed out that even though as many as two credit hours can be earned, at the rate of a half-credit for every 70 hours of service, the kids most heavily involved are the ones who least need the extra hours to graduate.
“It just gives the kids such a rush of self-esteem that they keep coming back for more,” she said. “It sounds corny, but they like the program because it makes them feel good to help.”
So what do they volunteer to do? “You name it, we do it,” Bond said.
– They visit four area hospitals, where they work as candy stripers, help out in physical therapy and sort mail.
– They go to seven or eight day care centers, where they play games and do crafts with the kids.
– They go to senior centers, where they make special breakfasts, hold birthday parties and do one-on-one visits.
– They hold picnics and work on Special Olympics activities with disabled children.
– They tutor at the high school.
– They have big brother and big sister outings for younger kids from disadvantaged families.
– They help younger kids with computers at the local library.
– They plant seedlings for the park district.
There’s more, but you get the idea.
Bond hopes to break national records this year for participation in the student volunteer program, which started in Minnesota as a “Point of Light” under the Bush administration.
“If anybody can do it, Elk Grove High can,” she said.
Eagle Scout
Robert Martin, 15, of Inverness, will be awarded scouting’s highest honor, the rank of Eagle Scout, Sunday.
Martin’s undertaking, which also earned him an outstanding project award from the Scouts and a plaque from Inverness, has also made a lot of Barrington-area wood ducks very happy.
According to his father, Robert, the younger Martin spent about 350 hours designing and building 14 cedar nesting boxes for the endangered ducks, under the direction of the Citizens for Conservation, a local environmental group.
He then trekked about a mile into the Barrington wetland areas last fall, despite rain, mud and cold weather, to situate the nesting boxes. Apparently the 3-foot high sawdust-lined boxes serve as an adequate substitute for hollow trees, which are traditionally a wood duck’s favorite place to nest, but, alas, the first thing to go when developers move in.
Martin garnered about a dozen fellow scouts from his troop, Hoffman Estates No. 461, to help him, and convinced local lumber and hardware stores to supply the cedar and nails.
More scouting honors
Lake Barrington is also planning to present plaques to two Eagle scouts, John Bak, of Lake Barrington, and Daniel Hodgson, of Barrington, both college freshmen, for their recent heroic deeds.
The two friends, who were also given awards of merit by the Northwest Suburban Council of Boy Scouts, were the only ones to stop at the scene of a major traffic accident on the Stevenson Expressway. They called for help, comforted the victim who was trapped in his car and directed traffic until police and paramedics arrived.
Prom time
Hersey High School parents are getting into recycling in a festive way this prom season: They are planning a “Play It Again” boutique featuring reasonably priced dresses and accessories “that have already been to the dance.”
Anybody willing to donate clean, bagged prom gowns and accessories can bring them to the multipurpose room at the school, 1900 E. Thomas Ave., Arlington Heights, March 18, 19 and 20. The sale will be April 17 and 18.
Half of all proceeds go to the committee sponsoring an after-prom, substance-free cruise, and half go to the donor. For information, call Kathy Hahn at 259-4753.
