Clubs

Question: Where can you tutor at-risk students, build a house, feed the hungry, clean up a river, adopt a highway, repair cages for leopards and visit with fellow alumni and friends? Answer: A Dartmouth club community service event. Dartmouth alumni have a long tradition of community involvement and regional Dartmouth clubs provide a unique opportunity to engage in service activities and events. At these events students, alumni, parents and friends, young and old, can bring their talents, ideas and energies together for their communities.

The scope of community service activities is limited only by the creativity and enthusiasm of club members, and can be tailored to meet the club's size, commitment and resources. Projects can be large or small, long or short, reoccurring or single events. A special advantage of community service events is that, though meaningful programs require personal involvement, they generally need very little financing.

Last year club community service events included donation of Braille editions of Dr. Seuss' Oh! The Places You'll Go! to graduates of the Visually Impaired Preschool Services Program (Dartmouth Club of Kentucky); Habitat for Humanity (Dartmouth Club of Fairfield County); Riversweep, an annual environmental cleanup of the Ohio Canal corridor (Dartmouth Club of Northeast Ohio); monetary gifts to the Duffy Health Center in Hyannis and to the Elder Services of Cape Cod (Dartmouth Club of Cape Cod); construction and rehabilitation of a home in conjunction with Family Homestead (Dartmouth Association of the Rocky Mountains); Habitat for Humanity and Second Harvest Food Bank volunteer events (Dartmouth Alumni Association of Silicon Valley); holiday party for the Beacon Center Gifted and Talented Kids program (DC/DAANYC)

Other clubs have supported the Special Olympics (Dartmouth Club of the Upper Valley), read to elementary students, built flight cages at a wildlife rehab center, painted cabins at a Boy Scout camp, donated boys and girls club memberships to underprivileged kids, adopted a family for the holidays and raked leaves for the elderly.

Would you like to participate in a club- sponsored event and help Dartmouth and her alumni make a positive contribution to local communities all over the country? Do you have an idea for a local community service event? Do you work with a charitable organization that could benefit from a group of Dartmouth volunteers? If so, your local club would love to hear from you.

19 Debbi Lane, Epping, NH03042;(603)734-2804; patricia.j.laughlin91@alum. dartmouth.org