Community Service Conference

For my Senior Project, I organized and hosted a four-hour conference for New York City high school students on how they can effectively participate in community service. I was responsible for bringing together five panelists from five different nonprofit organizations in different fields of service work, five different workshops lead by students from all over NYC and over 60 student participants.

Below is the speech Sara delivered at Senior Project night:

Hi, my name is Sara Caplan. Two and half weeks ago in this very building, I hosted the inaugural conference of community service for high school students. Standing in front of students and faculty from over a dozen schools from all over New York City, I spoke these words:

Welcome to the 2016 New York City High School Community Service Conference.

I’d like to start with a quote from Pope Francis that made me think about the core of what today is about. I heard this quote at a talk in reference to the Syrian Refugee crisis, but I think can be expanded to service work in general — and especially to service work at a high school level. Pope Francis said, “the world is suffering from the globalization of indifference.” That in itself is an amazing statement. “The globalization of indifference.”

But as much as I respect the pope, I think I’m going to have to disagree with him on this one. I don’t think that we suffer from indifference. I will admit that while sometimes it may feel like indifference, of course, it is not.

We, high-schoolers, New Yorkers, Americans, how ever big you want to make it, are not indifferent to poverty, inequity, abuse, a failing ecosystem, incarceration. It’s just that often we don’t know how to approach tackling these injustices or how to properly provide assistance. How do you help a boy who wants an education but has to work a full-time job to put food on the table? How do you help an animal who has been victim to an oil spill? How do you get an innocent mother out of jail? Honestly, for most of these injustices, I don’t have the answer. The fact is that it is very difficult for high school students to find ways in which they can be involved. Partnering with an organization and volunteering is a challenge when you are under the age of 18 or you lack experience. But without young adults – without you – organizations are missing out on valuable resources. An opportunity is being wasted to harness our energy to service important initiatives. Our energy cannot be wasted.

The good news is that there are opportunities for us to get involved, there are ways in which you can participate in a meaningful and positive way. There are people out there who have the information that we need in order to help. The people in this room, the people to your left and right, are proof that it is not indifference, it’s just a gap in information. And today, with your help, we will begin to fill that gap.

That was the opening speech that kicked off our conference. So, how did I get there, to that moment when I was talking about the way high school students can make a difference and why pope Francis was wrong? Well, it all started at the beginning of the school year. I was in a meeting of LREI Cares, the school’s community service club, and I looked at the maybe 30 students sitting in a room together, talking about the impact we were capable of making and thought, there is only so much we can do. There is only so much of an impact that we can make as 30 high school students sitting in a room. But, there must be dozens, hundreds of groups just like us, each with 30 high school students sitting in a room talking about the difference they are capable of making. What would happen if we brought those groups together? Could I build a new community within New York City high schools focused around community service?

So that is what I set out to do.

It was <pause> a fair amount of work.

Throughout the past six months, I sat through meetings with Phil, Micah, Mark, Karyn, Joy, Panelists, Workshop Leaders, Foundation Directors, Student leadership organizers, and the Service Department of the Department of Education. I created dozens and dozens of documents and invitations and pamphlets and schedules and worked my way through an entire dictionary-sized notebook of to do lists. Oh, and also emails, so many emails, an unbearable amount of emails. I had panelists quit with one week to go, I had workshops leaders email me the night before saying that it turns out they may not be available. I was consumed with stringing and stuffing name tags and folding hundreds of pamphlets. It is fair to say that it was a lot of work. But, on May 20th from 2:00-6:00PM the seeds of a new community were planted.

The participants tackled the question, what can I do? What can I do as a high school student to positively participate in service work? Panelists spoke on the connection between race and poverty in terms of youth incarceration and hunger, and about how organizations can be set in place to assist people with acquiring jobs in the new STEM-focused job market among other topics. Students participated in workshops focused on recognizing privilege in volunteer work, how to properly organize service events or sharing the story of a completely student-run organization. Students even spoke with organization leaders about volunteering opportunities in New York City. However, this was barely the beginning. To answer the question I posed at the beginning, yes, it is possible to create a new community focused around service work. But did I do it? Did I create that new community within New York City High Schools? Of course not.

Bringing nearly 100 students together from all over the city for the purpose of discussing the importance of high school involvement in community service proved to me that it is very possible. But we’re not done. This community needs to be built over the next few years, over the next few decades.

So, what’s next? Over the summer I will be putting together a comprehensive document on all of the different pieces of work that was done in preparation for the event. And for this next part, I am looking to all of the juniors in the audience. Maybe next year this will be your project. I am also in the process of putting together a database for high school volunteering opportunities so that students who want to volunteer to have proper resources to find an organization that will accept their help. Because, if this project has taught me anything it is that I stand by what I said earlier. There are so many students who want to help they just need to be given the tools and the community to support their endeavors. They are not indifferent. So I am going to have to disagree with the Pope on this one. We are far from indifferent.

Thank you.