BY LAURA LAPHAM
When our small acts of kindness don’t feel like they cause much of an impact, Make A Difference Day is here to remind us that it does.
This past Saturday, you might have seen a flock of girl scouts walking around A-quad during the afternoon.
The Denison Community Association hosted a service day with Girl Scouts to celebrate Make a Difference Day. The event took place across campus from 1 until 3 p.m. Girl Scouts ages 6-12 showed up with bright smiles and eagerness as Denison students helped them learn about the arts at Denison.
Sarah Schubert ‘21, an international studies major from Louisville, Kentucky, is one of the coordinators for Make A Difference Day. She believes make a difference day is important, since it helps “expose the girl scouts to opportunities of higher education.”
Denison’s Make a Difference Day is an annual program with a different theme every year, and this year was focused on the arts. Volunteers with varying artistic skills guided the scouts to different stations. The stations varied from using pastels to recreating “Starry Night” and spooky creative Halloween Mad Lib to learning part of the “Thriller” dance and singing acapella.
This day was also one of collaboration, as different groups, such as The Burpees and the Doobie, came to the event to show the girl scouts the opportunities in the arts that could be found on a college campus.
One member of the Doobie, Charles Stacy ‘22, a global commerce major from Cincinnati, described his time working with the program as “weird but fun.”
The highlight of the day was the service project, where the scouts made cards for kids at the Children’s Hospital. This emphasized the importance they have to make a difference as well, combining both fun and the idea of giving back.
Make a Difference Day is an annual community service event held on the fourth Saturday of October. It was started in 1992 by USA Weekend Magazine to share positivity and social justice throughout the country.
National Make a Difference Day has the largest national day of community service for more than twenty years.
“I was doing a fall craft with the girl scouts and it was so entertaining,” said Charlie Savoy ‘20, a psychology major from Pleasant Ridge, Maine. “We made leaf shaped suncatchers with tissue paper. It was really fun to help out.”
Susie Kalinoski, Associate Director of Alford CLIC, has been at Dension for 15 years and helps organize the program.
“It really helps Girl Scouts get up on the campus and get an idea of what college life is like that it’s not all just books. The arts are also important, and that’s why the theme was chosen this year,” Kalinoski said.
She also mentioned that this might be Make a Difference Day, but for DCA every day is a make a difference day. The DCA on campus does these weekend service projects often run by the students of Denison to help try to make a difference in the world.
Make a Difference Day was this week’s Saturday Service, but there are many other service opportunities that DCA holds throughout the year. To learn more about these opportunities reach out to [email protected].