From Conant Park in Southampton to the Beaver Brook Conservation area in Williamsburg and the forests of Goshen, Hampshire Regional High School students were active on Tuesday cleaning their hometowns as part of the school’s inaugural community service day.
“I was excited when I heard I was going to the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) Forest, I go here every year,” said Hampshire student Lydia Williams, collecting sticks and twigs scattered on the ground at the forest. “I wanted to help them.”
Williams was one of more than 100 ninth-grade students at Hampshire taking part in the school’s first Community Service Day on Tuesday. In the sunny spring weather, Williams cleaned up alongside several other students such as Amelia Woz, who was picking up trash in the forest, including cigarette butts and wrappers.
“It seemed like a nice way to help the environment and do community service hours,” Woz said.
The pile of trash the students collected would soon be brought to the Williamsburg transfer station for disposal, a routine that continued throughout the day at several locations.
Cleaning the forest was just one example of community service acts students fulfilled.
Students also spread mulch at the Westhampton Elementary School playground and completed various activities at councils on aging, schools, town halls, cemeteries, libraries and more locations throughout the five towns in the district — Southampton, Westhampton, Williamsburg, Chesterfield and Goshen.
“It gets the kids involved in community service, it gives them ideas of where they can do community service and what opportunities are out there, and the communities see the kids out in town,” said HRHS Assistant Principal Alex Seid.
Seid, who oversees the community service graduation requirement for students, organized the event to help ninth graders get a jumpstart to fulfilling their requirement, while also getting a chance to see what community service is all about. Most students need 30 hours of community service to graduate.
Williams started completing her community service hours by helping host a local bingo night, but said the hours she completed on Tuesday will help her fill the requirement. While only ninth graders participated this year — nearly every student in the grade joined — Seid plans to expand the event in the coming years to include other grades.
“Of all the extra bonuses, the kids are what matters most,” Seid said. “Yes, it’s a graduation requirement but if they’ve never done something like this, there’s a little hesitation. So to help facilitate a day for them and then have a day like this, it couldn’t be better for me.”
While Seid led organization efforts for the day, he said he had helping hands from many students who reached out to connect with the community organizations involved and arranged for students to visit. Those students are a part of Hampshire’s Academic Society, similar to the National Honors Society, made up of older students who have mostly already finished their community service hours but wanted to help younger students.
For example, Academic Society member and Hampshire senior Lucy McVey, of Williamsburg, contacted the Beaver Brook Conservation Area, which is managed by the Hilltown Land Trust, to organize students helping pull invasive plants from the shrubs in the area. Seid said he tried his best to place students in the towns they are from so they could have a closer connection with the work.
“We wanted to show them how easy, accessible and fun it [community service] can be and help out the kids who don’t have hours yet,” McVey said.
