City Engagement Finishes Semester Strongly

Throughout the semester, City Engagement at King’s has redesigned its vision, implemented structure and participated in numerous volunteer opportunities throughout the city.

According to City Engagement president Greg Pittman (’13), City Engagement used to be part of the House Competition every year. Houses competed by creating volunteer projects that were voted on by a panel of judges.

City Engagement was eliminated from the competition when staff members started realizing that Houses were not following through with their projects after the House Competition was over.

The organization was reinstated last year with ideas about making events optional for students and ways to encourage sincere city engagement.

Since its reinstatement, the City Engagement executive team has put a lot of work into shaping the group and getting students involved with volunteer opportunities.

“This year we are striving to be active and intentional in finding practical ways to connect with the city” Pittman said. “We are also trying to apply what we have been learning in class to real world outreach.”

Projects that City Engagement has participated in this semester include: Cool Roofs Painting Projects, Operation Exodus, Boxes of Love, New Life Church Food Pantry and The Bowery’s Thanksgiving Food Drive. The team also has many plans to continue volunteering next semester.

Aside from just volunteering, “we want to seem a lot more approachable to the student body” said city engagement coordinator Ally Philobos (’13).  “We also want to show students how important it is to engage the city while we are here.”

“Every great leader started as a servant” Pittman said. “We would love to see our school transformed into a group of servant leaders with at least 25 percent involvement in volunteer activities.”

City Engagement has meetings twice a month that are open to the student body and House Representatives. The meetings are a chance for students to get help on volunteer projects they would like to do, or to just learn more about how to be involved with City Engagement.

More information can also be found on the City Engagement blog at www.cityengagement.blogspot.com.