Community Works Campaign, Adopt-A-Family give back

Sarah Goetz Staff Writer

As we get ready to plunge once more into a hectic holiday season, the spirit of giving is again in the air. The Community Works campaign and Community Action’s Adopt-A-Family program are reaching out to the community outside Vassar’s gates.

Community Works, an organization designed to provide funding for local non-profit groups, is well on its way toward another banner year in collecting donations for the 10 non-profits that it will fund.
In its seventh year, the organization hopes to raise upward of $90,000—so far, they have collected about $50,600. Director of the campaign and Professor of German Studies Jeffrey Schneider is pleased with the program’s progress thus far.

“I think it’s going very well,” he said, “Part of what’s important to me about Community Works is that, as someone who lives in Poughkeepsie, I really do care about the people who live here and making the city and the area as just as possible, which means taking care of those who are less fortunate and giving them very important things, like food and shelter.”

One of the unique aspects of the campaign is that it utilizes the perspectives, input and, ultimately, donations from many different pockets of the Vassar community—members from custodial services, food services, buildings and grounds, faculty, administrators and students—have all been vital to the program’s success since its inception in 2001 and have provided essential support for this year’s campaign.

Members of the campus community are helping in varied ways. Faculty, administrators and staff can be reached most easily through meetings and campus-wide flyering, and often contribute through monetary donations and payroll deductions. Students typically contribute in other capacities.

And the students have goals of their own. “Our goal this year is to make $15,000 from the students, and that is a huge sum of money,” said Student Assistant to the President Jamie Rosen ’08. She said that “it has been done before.”

Rosen and her fellow Student Assistant to the President Kyle Giunta ’08 based their donation goal on the 2004 campaign, in which students contributed close to $14,000 to Community Works. Last year, however, students raised just $4,500.

While total student donations for this year currently stand at $2,000, Giunta and Rosen are hopeful for continued contributions to the campaign.

“The biggest ways that students are involved are the [Community Works] dinner, the dorm auctions and individual donations,” said Giunta. He said that non-event-related student monetary contributions should by no means be overlooked, as they total just over $500 thus far in the campaign. But “students are more involved when there is an event surrounding the donations.”

This third installment of the Community Works dinner, held on Nov. 27, brought in close to 300 students and almost $1,500 for the campaign. This greatly exceeded expectations and past attendance records. “It’s gotten bigger every year,” Schneider said, “We’re building up our reputation.” Food for the dinner was donated by Dining Services and area restaurants. In addition to the dinner, Rosen, Giunta and Schneider agree that dorm auctions, most of which will be held in the beginning of next semester, will contribute greatly to the campaign, particularly in the realm of student donations.

Additionally, many students volunteer and complete field work at the organizations that Community Works supports; during the summer and also throughout the school year, students have spent time at Dutchess Outreach and at New Horizons.

“Part of [the process] is trying to get Vassar folks off campus and at these agencies, where seeing is really believing, and then also bringing these groups onto campus,” Schneider said.

There has also been a continuing dialogue between the founders and representatives from the various county non-profit organizations and the Vassar community. John Flowers of the grassroots organization Celebrating Community has come to campus a number of times to speak with different groups. Flowers, along with Maria Marewski, founder of the Children’s Media Project, attended and spoke at the recently held dinner.

In addition to the Community Works campaign, Community Action’s Adopt-A-Family program is once again underway. The program relies on groups of students, faculty and other staff members to “adopt” a family or an individual member of a family within the community; these groups, which often consist of sports teams, Vassar Student Association groups, dorms or even academic departments, receive their adopted family’s wish list, and are then responsible for buying and wrapping presents to be delivered. So far, nearly 100 people in the Vassar community are contributing in some way .

The list of families to be adopted comes from a different organization each year. This year, Adopt-A-Family has received the list of families in need from Battered Women’s Services. “A lot of organizations in Poughkeepsie this time of year are doing an intake of families who are in need of things or have specific wish lists,” said Katie Brooks, one of five student coordinators of Community Action. “So they’ll put those lists out in the community through a variety of ways.”

This program is only one of the projects conducted annually by Community Action, a student-run organization that works in conjunction with the Field Work Office to provide students with volunteer opportunities in the local community. The organization provides “a way to incorporate an education aspect to [donating], so students who are giving not only know where it’s going, but are actually out there working with these organizations,” said Brooks.