The SMUS Values of respect, courage, honesty and service are practiced and echoed throughout the school, but the concept of “service” is one that Senior School students have taken to a new level this year.
With two Co-Heads, Service Council has raised more money for organizations local and abroad than any year before. Grade 10 homeroom classes have worked together to research and partner with a local service organization of their choice– one that will stick with their class until they graduate in Grade 12. Boarding houses voted to pick a community initiative to champion, choosing between environmental stewardship, health and wellness, and standard of living.
With these opportunities, students have been able to make an impact on the broader community, and see the changes in their own lives.
A New Take on Service Days
Together with other student driven fundraising initiatives, Service Council has tripled previous records by raising nearly $23,000 over the course of the 2023-24 school year.
“For the Service Council, students meet once a week and we help organize fundraising initiatives for service days,” explains Grade 12 student, and Service Council Co-Head, Annabel Howard. On service days, students can donate $5 to the cause of choice, and in exchange are welcome to wear non-uniform attire to school for the day.
The Service Council has taken it a step further with their recent efforts. “We’ve done bake sales, or coffee drive-throughs, and recently we decided to do something different and do a raffle for a Mayfair Mall gift card, and the money goes towards Phoenix Ukraine. On May 31st we’ll have grassroots soccer, where students donate a sign-up fee and can join with friends to enter a soccer tournament, and the money raised will go to Hope For Youth Uganda.”
“Being a part of the Service Council, you feel a sense of happiness when you know you’ve helped someone. We’re so privileged at SMUS, and I think it’s a really good thing for the broader community to know that we’re actually using our privilege to help others,” Annabel shares.
“There’s been a significant uptick in donations around service day, and we’ve tried really hard this year to bring in a representative from the organization to speak in assembly or chapel ahead of the service day. That education piece is giving the students an opportunity to feel really connected to an organization by putting a face to it, a name to it, maybe even a speech to it.” explains Elisha Gardiner, the Service-Learning and Community Engagement Coordinator at SMUS — an adapted role created to champion and evolve the school’s service initiatives.
Bringing Service to Classrooms
As a houseparent and SMUS employee on top of her formal service role, Elisha’s involvement in service at SMUS goes way back. Her wealth of knowledge has been invaluable in expanding service at the school and beyond the extracurricular club level this year.
“Each Grade 10 homeroom had the opportunity to explore organizations from three different areas of need: environmental stewardship, health and wellness, and standard of living,” Elisha describes. “They researched organizations, went out and engaged with the organization of their choice, learned a little bit about it, and met the community. When they came back, they started to develop an action plan for moving forward.”
Mr. Edgington’s homeroom class is partnered with Rainbow Kitchen. While they learned that it wasn’t feasible for them to volunteer in-person given the overlapping mealtimes with school hours, they did learn about the increased food scarcity outside of the “giving season” around the thanksgiving and winter holidays. As a result, the class will be running a competitive food drive between the Grade 10 homerooms at the end of the year, so increase food supplies for the Rainbow Kitchen during this time of year.
“Their service initiatives will follow their homeroom as they move through the Senior School, and creates an opportunity to practice leadership skills for Grade 12, if they want to run a club or council. The hope is that whoever in Grade 10 feels particularly passionate about their service initiatives will continue to move it forward, bringing ideas to the group and helping liaise with me to make sure logistics work out.”
Local Service with World-Wide Influence
The Grade 10 homeroom service initiative was inspired by Elisha’s endeavors in the boarding houses in 2023, where each house would also partner with an organization. “We looked at community needs through The Victoria Foundation’s Vital Sign Report, and then students were involved in picking the area of engagement they were interested in, '' she shares.
“For example, in Bolton and Timmis Houses, our organization is Soap for Hope Canada. One of our activities that we do is repackage soap products they get from the hospitality industry to distribute to those in need. This gave us the opportunity to ask, what are we actually giving? It’s more than just soap; we’re giving a sense of care and dignity back to people through personal hygiene. It’s not about how much soap we can repackage, it’s about making sure the bottles are nice and clean, the labels are straight, so that they feel that level of care.”
For boarding students, it’s also an opportunity to engage with the larger community they reside in for most of the year. “I really love to see students starting to feel like they have a sense of belonging in Victoria, and how they’re engaging with and ingraining themselves with the community when they come from all these different corners of the world,” Elisha emphasizes.
With students boarding from more than 30 countries including South Africa, Thailand, Germany, and Brazil, as well as many students boarding from locations across British Columbia, the opportunities allow students to explore the real world beyond the walls of the school campus — another benefit to attending an “urban” boarding school by Canadian standards.
“To me, participating in service means just being a good person,” explains Grade 11 student Cohen Labrecque, who is boarding from Qaulicum Beach, BC. “Both Harvey House and Barnacle House voted for environmental stewardship with the Peninsula Streams and Shoreline Society, and we’ve been helping survey forage fish spawning this year. Some students have become really passionate about environmentalism, so they’ve decided to build a rain garden on campus, too.”
As a second year boarder, Cohen has noticed a change in this year compared to last year; this active involvement has elevated what it means to have service as a core value. “I’ve learned a lot from being able to see different organizations come in and present to us, and how I can better respect the environment."
"I think these service initiatives are bringing more issues to light, and how important things are — some I didn’t even know about before. I think it’ll help tighten our bond as a community by working together.”
