Who said community service wasn't fun?



The dead-end parking depot where we began planting

Life often seems too busy to give back.  After 5 long days of work, the last thing I want to do is wake up early on a Saturday morning to do physical labor. I also find the concept of ‘community’ service projects to be confusing at times. I live in Manhattan and I don’t feel like I have a community. I barely know my own neighbors and we live on the same floor of an apartment building.

And yet, after participating in 2 community service projects with other Princeton 08ers over the last year, I have gained a new understanding of how we can form communities among strangers when we are all working towards a common goal. It can even be fun.

Carolyn, Micol, Colin, Irene and Me after planting the birdhouse

On Sept 26, a small posse of Princeton alumni ventured out to the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn to take part in a garden planting project.  The goal was to create a lush viewing area of the canal in the midst of a dusty, industrial wasteland that most recently served as the depot for parked buses. The problem was that pounds of trash and asphalt stood in our way. The Princeton team took on 3 major jobs: collecting trash that had been dumped for years, spreading gravel across the exposed asphalt to serve as a drainable soil bed, and planting a bird house.  By planting, I mean digging a 3-foot deep by 2-foot wide hole to bury the base of the bird house so that it could withstand Brooklyn winds and not be tossed into the polluted Canal. 



Alma, Katie, Me, Jay, Jess and Liz after raking in Prospect

One of my favorite parts of the afternoon was getting to meet classmates who I had never met during my 4 years at Princeton, but who came together out of a desire to give back, or perhaps because they wouldn’t believe there are canals in Brooklyn until they saw them.  It was also incredibly interesting to speak with locals who were invested in cleaning the canal that ran through their neighborhoods but was so dirty that it could not support living organisms.  



 Last fall, a group of us also participated in a slightly different community service project in Prospect Park, Brooklyn.  We raked leaves for hours in an effort to preserve the grass and keep the park beautifully green. Though we would all agree that the labor was light, it was the first time that many of us Manhattanites had ventured into Brooklyn and set foot in Prospect Park.