Providing students with opportunities to serve, to connect with the greater Springfield community, and to reflect on the service experience to better understand themselves, community needs, and their responsibility in advancing the common good, Wittenberg’s Community Service program will once again participate in Celebrate Service, a national, annual community service event which began 17 years ago.
Celebrate Service will take place on Saturday, April 13, at two locations – Wittenberg and Kenwood Elementary School, located at 1421 Nagley Street, Springfield. The event was created as a service event separate from Wittenberg’s Community Service 100 (CMSV 100) course to show the importance of service and to provide students, faculty and staff a chance to serve in the community.
Leaders of the event are community service coordinators from the Susan Hirt Hagen Center for Civic and Urban Engagement, Korynne Berner, class of 2020, and Kristen Eikenberry, class of 2020. Berner is a marketing major from Springfield, Ohio, and Eikenberry is a marketing major from Springboro, Ohio. This year’s theme will be Reclaim, Reuse, Recycle, and Serve.
"This year, Celebrate Service is held on Global Youth Service Day so we will be serving alongside thousands of youth across the country,” said Berner, a member of Tau Pi Phi, and the Wittenberg varsity women's basketball team. “We hope our project at Kenwood Elementary School helps enrich the learning environment for the youth who attend the school. Since we have a big music festival on campus that same day, we think Celebrate Service is a good opportunity for students to help the community in the morning and then go celebrate in the evening.”
Students need to register to participate in each event at www.wittenberg.edu/communityservice. All participants will be treated to lunch at the WittFest food trucks.
Students will work from 10 a.m. to noon to help Kenwood Elementary reclaim and redesign the school’s courtyard for use as an extended learning space. Students who signed up can meet at the “W” tables at the Benham-Pence Student Center at 9:30 a.m. The on-campus activity, which will take place near the WittFest food trucks from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., will involve recycling old WittFest t-shirts into functional bags that will be donated to the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church’s food pantry. Those participating in the on-campus event can meet at the “W” tables at 10:45 a.m.
