Wednesday: Community Service Club

The Community Service Club, led by Molly Block ’26 and Emma Tseng ’26, meets every Wednesday during break in Hazy 218 and strives to create convenient ways for students to help the school and the broader community around them. Although this is the club’s first year of service, Block and Tseng have many plans in mind to create a bigger impact on their surrounding community. The club is hoping to establish different types of drives, fundraisers and enrich the school throughout the year. The club tailors to the members’ wants to find their interests with a purpose beyond themselves and encourages the students to join and find ways to get involved in their community.

“We will be adapting the club to provide more variety of opportunities to help more diverse groups of people and expand our outreach,” Block said.

In their own words

We founded this club because we had noticed that there had never been easy convenient ways for students to help the Harvard-Westlake community and the broader community around us, especially during COVID-19. By starting the club, we have brought together HW students through their love of helping others and wanting to create a purpose beyond themselves through fun, hands-on, and engaging activities.
This is our first year running the Community Service Club. However, we will be adapting the club throughout the year in order to reach more HW students, create a bigger impact in our community, and provide more service opportunities. We hope that others will be able to continue this club in order to continue making a difference and help others do so as well.
Our goals for this year are to unite the Harvard-Westlake student body through service initiatives and to spread the message of helping the community by discussing issues that we face as well as making plans to tackle them. The club is a convenient way for students to get involved during the school day and to make connections with their fellow peers who are also interested in making a difference.
The Community Service Club is hoping to organize a successful year of community service events which include a Thanksgiving food drive, a winter holiday toy drive, beautifying the HW campus, and helping many other organizations through their initiatives. Since the club adapts depending on the needs of the community, we do not have a specific milestone, but we are hoping to get as many people involved as possible and to continue this legacy for future HW students to make an impact as well. We are also hoping to establish more ideas for school service, such as picking up trash around campus.
We will be hosting various fundraisers/drives throughout the year, which will include canned foods for Thanksgiving and toys and gifts to children and families in need during the winter holiday season. Additionally, we also plan to participate in other activities tailored to what the club members see fit. Lastly, we will occasionally do school service periods to help students reach that requirement as well. However, we will still be adapting the club to provide more variety of opportunities to help more diverse groups of people and expand our outreach.
The Community Service Club is looking to support a variety of organizations; however, there are a few specific drives that we will be doing throughout the year, including our Thanksgiving drive and holiday season drives. One important part of this club is exposing students to various causes so they can choose to do what interests them, so we are trying to find a variety of opportunities in order for students to find what they are passionate about. For example, we just completed a letter-writing campaign for Operation Gratitude, which was voted on by club members.
The purpose of this club is to find creative ways to help the community based on issues that students are passionate about. We want to spread this “purpose beyond yourself” mindset throughout Harvard-Westlake.
We would like to ask the school to find ways to get involved in the community and make an impact, no matter how big or small.