To encourage volunteering, Indian Valley Middle School hosted Community Day on May 16.
According to Indian Valley assistant principal Catherine Heller, Community Day is an event they have been holding for years.
For Heller, the inspiration for starting it was to help teach the kids to give back to the community.
“It gives them an opportunity to pause and really think about people and the world around them and the community that they live in and put them in different situations that they might not have had the chance to have before,” Heller said.
Indian Valley principal Josh Klimovich hopes the students take away that their age is not a restriction for volunteering, and they should be encouraged to help their community.
“[I hope they take away] just knowing that at any age they have the ability to think about others and give back to them and help in the smallest or the biggest way,” Klimovich said.
Klimovich said students were encouraged to volunteer prior to the event, and parents were able to log these hours.
“It was close to 500 hours of community service students did in grade six to eight [this year,]” Klimovich said.
Klimovich wants to make this event more focused on volunteering, to show the importance of it to the students.“I like that it keeps community service a longer term thing, not just a single day part of it,” Klimmovich said.
Many students feel it is important to get started volunteering at a young age such as middle school.
For sixth grader Grant Rueger, he feels middle schoolers need to know to help the community.
“The community could always have used help,” Rueger said.
Eighth grader Adan Ahmad agrees. “[The event] teaches them to give back to the community.”
Volunteers are looking forward to the community benefitting from this day. “I hope that the community gets a good and fair amount of money, and uses it for their needs,” seventh grader Israel Therency said.
Klimovich was happy to see the students interact outside of the classroom for a day.
“[I’m excited to see them] build upon the relationship they’ve already developed all year, and make some lasting memories,” Klimovich said.