Volunteers Stay Green

On Saturday, April 10th, 17 Elmhurst College students and staff served at SCARCE (School and Community Assistance for Recycling and Composting Education), an environmental education organization in Glen Ellyn, IL. While there, the group assisted with the Book Rescue Program, sorting and coding books for shelving in the SCARCE library. These books are donated to low income schools, families, alternative education programs and special education programs. In 2009 the book rescue program gave 11,000 books to nearly 2,000 families during the Back-To-School Fair.

Additionally, many volunteers worked on the Crayon Rescue Program, peeling wrappers, sorting colors, and preparing old, broken crayons to be melted down so that they can become new crayons. The reformed crayons, called Super Crayons, are larger than standard crayons. These Super Crayons are donated to schools and programs that work with children with special needs.

SCARCE does more than just this though. The organization has four other rescue programs as well as other recycling and educational programs for families, schools and communities. SCARCE, started in 1990, is a green organization that strives not only to educate its volunteers and participants, but also activate them to help create a sustainable future.

For more information on SCARCE please visit http://www.bookrescue.org/default.asp

On Saturday, March 13th, 16 members of the Elmhurst College community worked with ASPIRE, an organization that works with and supports individuals with developmental disabilities and their families. The group of volunteers assisted with a craft for residents of an assisted living facility, creating gift bags. The volunteers partnered up with some of the residents and spent the morning socializing and assisting them in designing and decorating their gift bags.

ASPIRE is an organization that strives to assist and support children and adults with disabilities as well as their families. Founded in 1960, ASPIRE has become a profoundly successful organization that supports many educational, social and employment programs as well as assisted living facilities that directly assist more than 1000 children and adults a year.

For more information about ASPIRE please visit http://www.aspireofillinois.org/index.html

Popular Project Makes Big Impact

The trip on Saturday February 13th, 2010 to the Feed My Starving Children facility in Aurora was by far our most popular service project this year! Nearly 40 students volunteered 5 hours of their time on Saturday to help put together specially formulated food packs designed to deliver essential nutrients to children suffering from malnutrition. Although the food packs are not difficult to make, it takes a lot of volunteered time to supply enough packs to support all of FMSC’s feeding programs in nearly 70 countries around the world.

After 5 hours at the FMSC facility, Elmhurst volunteers had made enough food packs to save 55 children from starvation for an entire year. The work, needless to say, was incredibly rewarding for all involved. The FMSC organization as a whole helped deliver more than 96 million meals last year alone, which kept many children protected from malnutrition and starvation. Many of the student volunteers enjoyed the fast-paced work and were more than willing to come back and help feed more children.




For more information about Feed My Starving Children please visit http://www.fmsc.org/Page.aspx?pid=398