Community service at LREI has been a core aspect of the school’s values, mission, and program since the school’s inception in the 1920s. Our school’s mission statement underscores the importance of cultivating an ethic of service among all our students and of integrating those values and mission into every area of the curriculum: social studies classes learning about the progressive era, or science classes delving into climate change, or g the inaccessibility of public health services in marginalized neighborhoods. A memorable student-initiated trip to New Orleans after Hurricane Katina, is one example of many such efforts; locally, student volunteers have regularly assisted immigrant senior citizens in the New Lots neighborhood of Brooklyn, working in their Community Gardens, and raising vegetables from their native diet not available in New York. Such intergenerational service experiences are transformative, forming lifelong habits of positive civic endeavor that embody the meaning of democratic citizenship. The Community Service Roundtable was developed solely by students who sought to provide energy, leadership, publicity and coordination in order to enhance the school’s service efforts, develop a calendar for service-themed assembly programs, and raise funds to be donated to narrowly focused start-up groups working in under-served neighborhoods.
The Community Service Roundtable
