National Bonner Service Days •April 2006

Over 16 schools will be participating in a National Bonner Day of Service sometime this month. This project was a brainchild of the Networking Action Team back at the Congress Meeting at Dickinson College back in November 2005, and it's so exciting to see Bonners rallying together in such a busy month. Special thanks to Neil Hartmann from The College of New Jersey who has worked very hard to help coordinate this effort. Below are some of the examples of projects:

Allegheny and Waynesburg College, Nick French:
Allegheny will be partnering with Waynesburg College for the National Bonner Day of Service on April 1st. Bonners will be serving at the following sites:

• Kids Café (entertaining children)
• The Humane Society (cleaning and obedience)
• Shelter Sheep Farm (manual labor)
• Senior Center (cleaning and outdoor jobs)
• Open Arms (entertaining consumers)
• Salvation Army (warehouse)

Over 30 Bonners will be involved in this event.

Davidson College, Kwesi Fynn:

Davidson will be working on four different sites to have an impact on Hunger and Homelessness. They include:

• Mooresville Soup Kitchen - The group will be doing maintenance work for the soup kitchen, which will include painting, defrosting all their freezers, bleaching the chairs, and various other tasks.
• Crisis Assistance Clothing Ministry - The group will be going through donations, helping to sort and fold clothing and other items that have been donated. The program is similar to Goodwill.
• Habitat for Humanity - The group will be doing a Habitat build, helping to construct a house in Cornelius.
• Loaves and Fishes - The group will going around to pick up food from a food drive going on in Davidson. Then they will help sort and put away the food at the Loaves and Fishes pantry at the Ada Jenkins Center.

The groups will each be around 8-10 people. The service day will last all day. There will be a short reflection at the end of the service to relate it to hunger and homelessness, to discuss future service in light of these hunger and homelessness issues, and to have each person debrief and express their thoughts on the day. The goal of the service day is to increase awareness and get others to become more involved in service. The Bonners will be serving as mentors in the group to those who do not normally do service, and in teaming together to do service, the latter group will better understand what service means and what role it can play in society.

Guilford College, Kristi Matthews:

Guilford is doing a celebration for the volunteer sites they are committed to year-round. The kids will be coming to Guilford and having an all-day fun celebration. There will be all kinds of activities and food. There will also be non-Bonner students involved as well as professors and staff who will be bringing their kids. They will have at least 100 kids and it is going to be a lot of fun!

Oberlin College, Untax My Heart Day, Charlotte Collins:
Oberlin will be participating in the day of service on April 22nd. They will be taking part in the heart project (started by an Oberlin Bonner Scholar). This project is very special to the Oberlin community. The Heart Project was started in 2004 by Brea Weil-Hearon who lost her mother in 1994 from a massive heart attack at the age of 45. Brea was only thirteen at the time of her mother's death. She is now a college graduate and is making it her life's ambition to help prevent other women from suffering a premature death from heart disease. The Heart Project provides much needed funds to the Women's Heart Foundation to help support its wellness, awareness and prevention programs. The Heart Project collects unwanted costume jewelry during the months of November through March. The jewelry is then cleaned and polished by service organizations and made available for resale at an event the first Saturday after tax day, call "Untax My Heart". The Heart Project was started with Brea's own mom's jewelry. She held the first event while enrolled at Oberlin College in Ohio. Brea's sorority sisters wanted to help raise funds for women's hearts too so they contributed their own' mothers' jewelry as well and assumed the role of cleaning and polishing it and setting up a sales event in Oberlin, combining the jewelry sales event with another college happening. This one jewelry sale event raised $4,000! Brea has relocated to Indiana and has accepted the position of Chair of the Heart Project for the Women's Heart Foundation. She is building a network of support for this event to be repeated at the Indiana University while the Bonner Scholars at Oberlin College will continue with The Heart Project as a campus service project. Brea is also working with Bonner Scholars at The College of New Jersey and other volunteers to have a successful jewelry collection and sales event there.

Tusculum College, Greg Shivers:

Tusculum will be participating on the April 22 service day. They are planning on incorporating our New S.O.S. (Service on Sat.) program and do a huge project somewhere in the community. They are also currently thinking about doing something environmentally to celebrate Earth Day.

All Bonner National Day Of Service Event Planning Guide

Lining Up a Planning Committee

This may very well be one of the most important steps of the process as this committee is what will make the project happen.

1. Identify a lead person: This person will be coordinating the event and will need to be willing to take the lead and make sure things get done. They will be in touch with Neil and the interns at the foundation to get resources and ideas and information on how they can make the project work for their group and campus.
2. Create a team:The team should also consist of people willing to take a lead role in making this project happen. They will need to be able to work together and take on different roles and jobs to make sure that all the different parts of the project come together.
3. Confirm roles for the Bonner Staff: This will hopefully be a primarily student organized event, but the staff should be willing to help facilitate the event through their various resources and advising.
4. Determine team roles: Each member of the team should be willing to take on a certain objective such as coordinating transportation, coordinating lunch, etc. They should make it their personal objective to get that task completed for the day of service. They could find other people to help them as well.

Picking a Project

It will be important to pick an appropriate site for an all day service project, or multiple sites in cases where there are a large number of people participating.

1. Think about transportation: How many people will be involved? Will you all be driving or using public transportation? Will you be able to get college vans? Will you need to get a bus? This is an instance where a staff member’s experience and authority can be a big help.
2. Focus on partner organization(s): It will be important to coordinate a service day project with an organization that will realize your group’s size and ability. A partner organization that you have previously worked with may be a good choice as they will already know your limitations and have amore accurate expectation of your group.
3. Address feasibility: How much will you be able to get done in one day given the number of volunteers that will be participating. It will be important to pick a site where they will be able to best utilize all the participants, and if there are a large number of participants to maybe pick two different sites. You must also keep in mind that there are only 2 months left to coordinate this event and that may also play a role in deciding whether or not a site is an available option.
4. Integrate Common Commitment(s): You will also want to try to pick a site that relates to this year’s common commitment of “Community Building”. You will want to tie in the common commitment with the event planning to get a better understanding of the common commitment through your work. You will be reflecting on the event in relation to the common commitment afterwards so it will be important to keep that in mind while choosing a site.

Service Event Planning

Planning the event may prove to be the most challenging part of the whole project, because it will need to be a very deliberate process to make the most of the experience.

1. Defining the project: You will need to define the goals of the project, as well as the nature of what the group will be doing to achieve these goals.
2. Recruit volunteers: All Bonners should participate, as that is the goal of this day, but it is also an option to encourage others on campus to participate. If you are really ambitious you could turn it into a campus wide community service day. But if you are simply recruiting a small amount of volunteers other than Bonners, be sure they will be willing to work and try to gain some education out of the experience.
3. Arrange for tools: If the project requires tools, be sure to gather all the necessary tools in advance to make sure that everyone will be able to participate.
4. Plan transportation: Be sure to have enough transportation for all those volunteering. Decide whether to take cars, vans, maybe even busses if you have enough volunteers.
5. Connect the event to the larger All Bonner National Day of Service: Be sure to discuss the big picture, and make the group realize they are part of something much bigger and that Bonners all over the country will be working of the same day. You may want to get in touch with Neil or the interns for information on other schools that you could give out to aid this. Have a Bonner Orientation before the project to help them realize the goals of the project and how the event coordinates with the common commitment of the year. Print out the cool t-shirt design from the web site and get it printed onto shirts of your school’s color. This may also be something that the staff members could be a great help with.
6. Arrange food and drinks: MAKE SURE NOT TO FORGET LUNCH…EVERYONE LOVES FOOD! Try to plan a nice lunch for the middle of the event. Maybe get together and pack lunches the day before or order some food to be delivered for lunch. Either way this is a great time to reflect and discuss a little about the project and what you are doing.
7. Design programming: You definitely wantto have an orientation one of the days before the event or the morning of it to give some background information about the Common Commitment, the social issue you will be dealing with at the site, and the site’s history and mission. You will also be asked to have a reflection session sometime during the day and in the following week to discuss more thoroughly the event and its meaning.
8. Include evaluation: Evaluate the success of your event and the amount of help and support you received from all the different people that helped make the event happen.
9. Follow-Up: Write up a small bio about what your group did and send it in along with pictures to the foundation so we can put it up on the website so everyone can see what you did.

Suggested Planning Timeline for Bonner National Day of Service

By February 15th

• Line Up Committee
• Choose Leader(s)
• Choose Members
• Talk to staff about getting help with resources
• Set out roles for each individual team member (transportation, food, etc.)
• Get in touch with Neil or the interns to get other resources and help

By March 1st

• Check projects for feasibility
• Ensure the size of the group is not a problem
• Be sure to pick a project that ties into the Common Commitment
• Select project(s) that will work the best

By March 15th

• Plan Project
• Plan transportation
• Get supplies
• Have t-shirts made
• Arrange meals
• Recruit other participants or link up with another Bonner school (optional)

By March 29th

• Plan orientation and reflection, incorporating partner staff
• Plan day of event management
• Plan orientation of the site
• Plan orientation of the common commitment
• Plan orientation of how they are related
• Plan refection session for after the event

April 1st or April 22nd (depending on school)

Implement project! Have a great day!