9,000 pounds of potatoes.
That’s what senior Rachel Givens, and other members of Senior Women and Men, packaged for people in need when they worked at a local food bank.
Senior Simran Panwar, Vice President of Ferguson Youth Tutoring, taught a girl the alphabet, only to come back to find that the girl had forgotten everything she had learned before.
Students participate in service organizations as a way to make a change in the community, and have found themselves impacted as well.

Roots:
Participating in service inside and outside of school, volunteers are exposed to a number of opportunities to lead.
Senior Josh Yang, the “pioneer” of Ferguson Youth Tutoring, created the organization last fall after the tragic events in Ferguson transpired.
“I was looking at the current political and socioeconomic conflicts in the local communities and decided that the best initiative I could take would be to start up the program,” Yang said.
The organization has expanded to include students from Parkway North and West, along with a group from a fraternity at Washington University. They tutor at the Ferguson Municipal Library three times a week, and kids from the area can come in to get help.
“We have kids that are completely financially secure and are just coming in for extra help with school,” Panwar said, “and we have people from a homeless shelter or seniors who need help to learn fractions so that they can do their own taxes.”
Project Help, whose mission is “to provide support and outreach to the disadvantaged and needy in the local, national, and international communities,” recently finished their program, Project Patriot. The program collected items to benefit veterans, and was organized by two of Project Help’s executive board members, including junior Myra Dotzel.
According to Dotzel, members of the executive board meet to discuss and organize events once a week.
“In January, we’ll have the Cinderella project, which is a prom dress drive for the Foster and Adopted Fare Fellowship,” Dotzel said.
Similar to Project Help, Senior Women and Senior Men volunteer at events specific to Central, like working the concessions at basketball games and helping freshmen at orientation, along with donating their time in community based service.
“On Thanksgiving we served food to the homeless downtown, and we do a lot of work at the St. Louis local area food bank,” Givens, a student organizer of Senior Women, said.
According to Givens, adding a service aspect to the program gives it more of a purpose.
“It makes the organization more legitimate, and gives members an opportunity to see some of the problems that are going on in the community and how they can directly help them,” Givens said.

The Impact:
Because of these organizations, members have been able to see their ability to directly impact the community.
This direct influence can be seen even on the smallest of scales.
“My favorite part is watching the kids grow and learn,” Yang said.
Tutors help this process along by forming one-on-one bonds with the students with whom they work, and helping them to overcome obstacles.
“You have to figure out creative ways to help (the students) understand things,” Panwar said. “The rate at which they learn things are different, so you have to get adjusted to each student.”
Beyond each separate person, there is a change that occurs simply by bringing people together in a calm learning environment.
“I like the fact that a lot of people from different backgrounds come in for tutoring there,” Panwar said. “I feel like we’re actually making a difference.”
While members of Ferguson Youth Tutoring see a more gradual impact, Givens said that Senior Women spent just three hours packaging the 9,000 potatoes.
“It was really cool to see how much our organization could do for the community in such a short amount of time,” Givens said. “By donating our time, we’re able to help people who might not get the service they need.”
The fact that busy high school students are willing to give up their time to help the community is exciting for Panwar, as she sees many people who are eager to help with Ferguson Youth Tutoring.
“I love the fact that everyone wants to do it, regardless of if they do it every single week,” Panwar said.
Dotzel also said that one of the reasons she enjoys participating in Project Patriot is being enabled to make a change. “It helps me make the lives of others better,” Dotzel said.

Back to the Students:
Along with benefiting others, volunteers feel as if the work they do is an asset to them as well.
Givens, along with senior Kristen Stolte, works to remind members about service hour events, and after events they report the hours. Her role also involves reaching out to businesses and organizations that need volunteers. More than anything, Givens believes her time management and organization skills have improved as a result of leading.
“Senior women has 86 members and there are a lot of service events,” Givens said. “It’s important to stay on top of communication, and I’ve learned how to be more responsible and proactive in making
sure all the information reaches the group.”
Dotzel also finds that volunteering extends her personal knowledge.
“It helps me gain insight into what’s happening in my community,” Dotzel said.
Although she is teaching others, Panwar also believes that tutoring has taught her.
“I learned that if you give them an incentive the students will actually do their homework, and if you create flashcards, that’s an easier way for them to study than just a sheet of problems,” Panwar said. “I feel like that’s really good, to work things out in that way and try to figure out things from someone else’s perspective, how it would be best for them to learn things.”

Contributed reporting by JP Byrne, Piper Rother, and Robert Shifrin.