All-School Conga, CARES Walk Kicks-Off Annual Middle School Day of Service

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 3, 2011
Contact: /410.649.3216

Baltimore, MD—

Recipe for a fun and successful service trip (Friends Middle School-style)

1. Start with 270 sixth, seventh and eighth graders.
2. Have them fill shopping bags (donated by Whole Foods Market Mt Washington) with much-needed toiletry essentials (brought from home) for CARES clients.
3. Form a conga line and weave it through the School. (Why not?)
4. Walk from Friends to CARES food pantry and emergency assistance center (5502 York Road), a program of the Govans Ecumenical Development Corporation (GEDCO).
5. Drop off donations. A group of Friends students will stay and stock them.
6. The rest of the students will return the Friends campus, break into groups and disperse throughout the city to engage in additional community service projects throughout the day.

Their charge is a serious one: to go to more than a dozen service sites throughout Baltimore and to do whatever is needed. But for the 270 Friends Middle School students, this Friday, November 4, will start with some silly fun: a giant conga line!

Welcome to Quaker Community Day, when Middle School students joyfully leave their books and planners in their lockers, roll up their sleeves and get to work at such locations as Leakin Park, SPCA and Paul’s Place, among others, to perform community service.

As in the past the students will begin their community service day with a scenic walk through Homeland to the CARES food pantry and emergency assistance center. Each student will tote a reusable shopping bag that they’ve filled at home with soap and toilet paper for CARES clients. (Seventh grader Grace Hehir ’17 secured the donation of 270 bags from Whole Foods Mt. Washington.) As an added bonus to CARES, proceeds from the grocery chain’s “Nickels for Not for Profits” program will benefit the pantry, which was selected, along with BARCS, as this month’s Nickels for Not for Profits recipient.

 

Now in its 227th year, Friends School of Baltimore is an independent, college preparatory school for boys and girls age 4 through grade 12. Rooted in the enduring values of the Quakers, the School is committed to providing a balanced education and developing in each student a vigorous intellect and the habits of a peaceful heart.