Linking students with the community

Hawken School recently hosted its first-ever community service fair. Over 40 local agencies, organizations and businesses from Cuyahoga, Geauga and Lake counties participated. Hawken`s community service director Nadja Deighan hopes that the event is a way to jumpstart a worthwhile community service program for the students. "The first thing I have to do is to educate our kids about the options that are out there," she said. "...There are a multitude of things they can do where they can give their time." This year Hawken freshman are required to fulfill a five-hour requirement of school service, which will jump to 10 hours next year. Sophomores and juniors must perform 32 hours of community service and seniors spend the latter part of their year in a senior project. The fair was intended to assist every grade level in finding ideas to satisfy their service quotas. Deighan hopes that students move beyond the idea of simply fulfilling a requirement and begin to get a deeper understanding of a world beyond Hawken. "I`ve said to the kids, +óGé¼-£You know what? As you grow up you find out you`re not the center of your universe and that this world in which you live will only be a good as those of you who are willing to contribute to it.`" Charlene Higgin Botham, a volunteer for the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless (NEOCH), one of the fair participants, said such an awareness of this "real world" comes through exposure. Higgin Botham heads up NEOCH`s Street Voices, a program that takes the perils of homelessness to area organizations, churches and businesses. Speakers are always people who have been homeless. Some still are. "You can see the faces change, when they hear a person say +óGé¼-£I lived on the street` or +óGé¼-£in the back of my car and I didn`t have any place to go or any resources.` It kind of makes them sit up in their seat," she said. Deighan was pleased with this first run of the service fair. \"The participants raved about our kids and about the faculty members who stopped to speak with them,\" she said. \"Some invaluable links to the greater Cleveland community were connected.\" But if she has her way, this year`s fair is but a precursor of a larger movement that will ensure that many of these organizations are not forgotten.