Attention senior citizens: need some assistance painting your windows? Cleaning out your garage? Raking leaves? Or figuring out how to install that latest security patch for Microsoft Windows?
Simply call Riverside-Brookfield High School, and they’ll send a student to help you.
Specifically, that student will arrive on Oct. 28, the day of the high school’s first-ever, school-wide community service project, “Bulldogs Give Back.”
Superintendent/Principal Jack Baldermann explained that the day will involve sending student volunteers to the home of local senior citizens who have made work requests. He said these requests can involve anything from yard work and simple household repairs to assistance with technology problems.
“The point is to ask senior how we can help them with minor tasks,” he said. “If a request is over our heads, we would regretfully have to decline, but we don’t know until we ask.”
To submit a request, residents have to fill out a form describing the work they’d like done and send it to the school by Oct. 13. Baldermann said he was hoping to receive 40 to 50 requests. Indeed, in the first week of promoting the program, he said, the school had already received about a dozen requests from residents.
Baldermann also noted that the day will include a special clean-up of a local park or forest preserve by student volunteers from RB’s Ecology Club. He said organizers of the club were hoping to recruit about 50 students to help with that aspect of “Bulldogs Give Back.”
Although individual student groups have organized community charity events in the past, this is the first time the school has been involved in a project of this kind, Baldermann said. Administrators have worked with multiple student organizations, as well as the parent-run Patron’s Council, in organizing the day.
Baldermann explained that administrators wanted to organize such a large-scale community project for two reasons: to teach students the value of service, and to thank the community for their support of the school. Last spring voters approved a $58.8 million bond issue for a major renovation/expansion of the RB campus.
“I really believe students will learn so much from serving others,” he said. “What really matters are people who are willing to make a difference in their community. This is the most important thing we can teach them.
“We have a great high school, and we receive tremendous support from our community. This is just a small way to say thank you for that.”
Depending on the success of this first year, Baldermann said, he hopes to make “Bulldogs Give Back” a regular event at RB.
“We’ll see how it goes, what we learn, what positive feedback back we receive,” he said. “But I would like to see it become an annual thing.”