Community Council has planned two upcoming community service trips at Los Angeles Family Housing and TreePeople for students to fulfill their community service requirement.
This year Community Council is focusing on planning events for specific clubs and sports teams.
“Each of the events we plan are specifically geared towards the club so that they have a good time because it’s related to something they enjoy,” community council member Nicole West ’14 said.
West and Caitlin Yee ’13 organized an event in conjunction with LA Family Housing for AP Chemistry students on Nov. 10.
“I really love AP Chemistry and I thought it would be really fun to plan some sort of event for us and I think it’s going to be really fun,” West said.
The event will take place at LA Family Housing, which West found when doing online research for Community Council.
Previous Community Council members have also worked with the organization in the past.
“I planned the science event for kids at LA Family Housing who don’t have the proper education they need to learn the basics of science,” West said. “We’re bringing interactive science experiments and making the kids feel like a learning environment is fun and enjoyable.”
West said they would demonstrate experiments using a toy volcano to get the students excited about learning.
There are 20 spots available for AP Chemistry students for the event, given out on a first come, first served basis, but West is planning on returning to LA Family Housing again in February with the students who didn’t get to go the first time.
“I’m looking forward to having fun with the kids and teaching them some cool experiments, having fun with science and bonding with the chemistry kids more,” she said.
Tate Castro ’13 has organized an event on Nov. 17 with TreePeople, an environmental nonprofit organization.
The event will take place at Malibu Creek State Park and students will be planting trees and restoring the area around the park.
“I got the idea by looking around on volunteer websites,” Castro said.
She said that the process of setting up an event is very involved. First, a member must find a date when no other school events are taking place. Then, the member must contact the person in charge of the event and make sure they can accommodate a large group of people and that event itself can be hands-on, therefore fulfilling the school requirement. Once that was complete, Castro started working on the liability for the event, which is what the students and parents need to sign in order to participate, which she said was much more difficult than it may seem.
There is space for 15 students to attend and students can sign up online by registering for the Santa Monica Mountains Restoration or by emailing Castro.
“I think it will be a lot of fun, and a really easy and simple way to get your community service done,” she said.
Community Council has also organized events for the tennis team, who worked with the Special Olympics, and for the chamber singers, who worked with Operation Gratitude.
Community Council member Max Rothman ’14, organized the tennis event and Community Council member Tara Joshi ’14, organized the chamber singers event.
