Who We Are
	Community Service Learning at LREI

Our goal is to educate students to become independent thinkers and lifelong learners and to pursue academic excellence and individual achievement in a context of respect for others and service to the community.

- LREI Mission Statement

Service is the rent we pay for living…Education is for improving the lives of others and leaving your community and world better than you found it.

Educating for democracy is a central part of LREI’s mission, and service learning is a vital and indispensable means of achieving that mission. The 2003-04 school year was marked by exceptional achievements in the school’s community service program. Capping off the year, LREI students, teachers and parents marched together in the AIDS Walk on May 16th, raising $18,000.

Lower School

Beatrice Biira, the protagonist of the children’s book Beatrice’s Goat, published by Heifer Project, visited LREI in March, along with a camera crew from 60 Minutes II, which is doing a documentary on Beatrice’s life to be aired this fall.

In the months that followed Beatrice’s visit, several Lower School classes raised money for Heifer Project.

• Second Graders in Tasha and Seth’s and Beverly and Kris’s classes raised $1,043.90 for a project in Burkina Faso called Livestock for Schools. Animal shelters will be built and livestock provided for several schools, and students will receive animals for their personal livestock projects at home.
  
• The Isingera Women’s Goat Project, in the Kagera Basin of Uganda, will use the $238.63 donated by first graders in Gina and Alyx’s class to increase family income and raise nutritional and living standards.
  
• Through the sale of marigold and basil plants they raised last spring, Sandy and Katie’s Fours and Diane and Stephanie’s Early Kindergarten donated $282.00 for The Agroforestry and Camelids Improvement Project in the Andean region of Peru. This project will improve environmental conditions and increase the income of 200 families in ten communities in the department of Puno.

• collected food for the pantry at St. John the Baptist Church on West 31st Street
• made greeting cards for the elderly
• planted flowers and helped clean up Washington Square Park
• raised funds to buy rain forest acreage and to help save New York City zoos
• donated books, toys and clothing to organizations that work with children and their families.

Middle School

Beatrice Biira also met with the Middle School during her visit – the students asked her probing questions about the social, cultural and economic realities of life in Africa. During the spring, art classes in fifth through eighth grades, under the direction of teachers Melissa Rubin and Susan Leopold, raised $712.69 for the Kgotiopiane Livestock Project in South Africa.

Closer to home, Middle School students:

• used a five hundred dollar grant from Common Cents to beautify Little Red Square outside the Sixth Avenue entrance to the school and have replanted twice since then.
• worked with rangers at Prospect Park for three years, learning why particular areas needed to be cleared, protected and mulched.
• visited the St. John’s pantry each Tuesday to bag food collected by Lower School children for disadvantaged, underfed families.
• collected UNICEF money at Halloween.
• collected sponsors to attempt free throws at the Charlton Street gym for Special Olympics and were the 10th school in the country in donations.
• decorated Thanksgiving bags for God’s Love We Deliver in November.
• made holiday cards for young chronic care patients at the Foundling in December.
• participated in the Valentine’s Day “Give a Meal, Give a Heart” project in February.
• collected books for distribution through Project Cicero to schools that don’t have well stocked libraries of their own in March.
• participated in “Pennies for Patients” for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

High School

• High School students volunteered at the New York Food Bank – the largest food distribution center in the world, where they labeled and boxed thousands of cans of food destined for food shelters throughout the city.
  
• High School students participated for the second year in the New York Cares Youth Partnership – a project LREI has piloted for the entire City – working on such issues as HIV-AIDS awareness, literacy programs, after-school care, community arts programs and working with the homeless.
  
• Through the student-organized “Tools for Art” initiative, High School students distributed art materials to children visiting their mothers in battered women’s shelters.
  
• Student Action for Children, the student-led community service roundtable and philanthropic foundation, completed its second year of providing grants – this year totaling nearly $10,000 - for volunteer organizations serving children throughout New York. These SAFC grants will support the following activities: remedial education for underachieving elementary school students from immigrant families; leadership, cultural awareness and civic participation through after-school programs serving young people in under-served communities; art, video, photography, animation, music and computer classes for children in New York City’s foster care system; education and leadership programs for academically gifted African-American and Latino Students in preparation for matriculation at independent high schools.
  
• High School students volunteered on several projects that undertake comprehensive and holistic community development strategies and foster positive youth development through participation in the urban agriculture movement.
  
  

The Parents Association Community Service Committee, chaired by Jennifer Edson and Denise Adler, developed a unique series of family community service opportunities called LREI Families Fight Hunger. Organizations supported through volunteer service included:

• Meals on Heels – preparing and delivering meals to home bound elderly and infirm.
  
• Neighborhood Coalition for Shelter – providing support, rehabilitative services, transitional housing and vocational training for homeless men and women in New York City.
  
• United Community Centers - assisting with the Center’s East New York Farms! internship program, which involves twenty-five teens in the gardening and entrepreneurial skills development needed to operate a Saturday farmers’ market. UCC provides social, recreational and educational services for children and their families across lines of race, religion and ethnicity.
  
• Added Value – volunteering with Added-Value’s urban farming program which develops programs for student interns studying agro-ecology, nutrition and food justice, and developing entrepreneurial and leadership skills.

The Parents’ Community Service Committee was also instrumental in forging LREI’s relationship with Heifer Project International. This relationship led to exceptional experiences and service learning opportunities for our students during the 2003-04 school year - and promises to lead to even more during the year ahead. The core mission of Heifer International is to assist impoverished families and communities around the world achieve sustainable civic, environmental and economic development by promoting grassroots organization and cultivating local leadership. The executive staff of Heifer International conducted a faculty workshop on service learning in January. They also worked with students in grades seven through twelve on such topics as globalization, sustainable development and environmental stewardship.

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Service Learning at LREI:

Service learning is an integral component of LREI’s educational vision and program. It enriches both our curriculum and the life of our school community. It reflects and expands upon the original mission and spirit of our school, which, since its founding in 1921, has sought be a vital part of the living experience of the City, the nation and the world - not an exclusive refuge from it. Through participation in our school’s community service program, students develop self-awareness and a sense of genuine achievement interwoven with the values of interdependence, cooperation and empathy for others. Throughout its history, LREI has demonstrated a commitment to educating for social justice, inclusion and diversity, and to preparing young people for lives of active citizenship. More LREI students are embracing and making good on that commitment than ever before. We should all be very proud of them.

  Nicholas O’Han
  School Historian
  June 10, 2004

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