RISE 2017 Sees Sophomores Tackle Homelessness, Food Insecurity, Other Important Social Issues

 

Now in its seventh year, RISE (Reflection and Introspection through Service Education) is a program that encourages personal growth and the development of leadership skills through service. This year on RISE Day, students did much of their service work off campus during the morning before returning to campus to pack meals with End Hunger Northeast, one of the program’s staple service initiatives.

 

End Hunger Northeast is a non-profit that supplies nutritious meals to food pantries throughout the region. What makes the drive at Rivers unique is that all the meals assembled by Rivers students are distributed to food pantries right in Middlesex County, the most food-insecure county in the Commonwealth.

 

Last year marked the first time that senior citizens from the Sages & Seekers program were invited to and take part in tech workshops led by Rivers students, but this year saw the Sages get even more involved by assisting in the packaging of meals alongside their Rivers “seekers.” Click here to read more about the Sages & Seekers program.

 

A special addition to this year’s program was a talk from Marissa Birne ’14, a Rivers alumna who, through RISE, founded her own non-profit organization, Art to Heal.

 

One of the off-campus programs that had a particularly large impact was the Heading Home group. Heading Home is a non-profit organization that provides transitional services and permanent housing to low-income homeless and formerly homeless families in Massachusetts. This is the third group of Rivers students to work with Heading Home, a relationship that was forged by the work of siblings James ’14, Anne ’16, and Marie Jennings ’19. The gorup spent seven months collecting furniture and household items to prepare a home for a formerly homeless family.

 

Then, on May 20, this group of Rivers students helped move a family into a home in Medford that was furnished with the household goods and furniture donated by the Rivers community. The group hired a moving van and supplied the muscle to complete the move.

 

Heading Home was the beneficiary of a Rivers Givers grant in 2016, which funded the materials for birthday boxes for young children from families associated with Heading Home. These boxes were then assembled and prepared for distribution by sophomores on RISE Day.

 

“The RISE program is designed to give students a chance to explore and raise awareness about an issue in our society that they care about, and to reflect on their leadership qualities and skills,” said Director of Service Learning Kit Cunningham. “Sophomores propose topics to their classmates, and as a project group they decide what to research, how to raise awareness, and what action they will take around that topic. Out of the 15 projects this year, there were five projects looking at hunger and homelessness, and five working with special needs populations.”

 

“We are also seeing RISE projects that are being continued year to year, such as the Casa Myrna program, which makes Mother’s Day baskets for a domestic violence shelter. Students also complete self reflection exercises, solicit feedback on their leadership  qualities form adults, and meet with school administrators as part of understanding themselves as members of communities and potential leaders.”