Paint a School

            On Saturday, October 17, 2009, fifty Pace University Students participated in the annual Paint-A-School Day with New York Cares. This service event was lead by the Center for Community Action and Research, formerly the Center for Community Outreach. The event is hosted every year in conjunction with New York Cares in order to provide schools with the help (and some TLC) that they may go without over the course of the year, if it were not for volunteers. We traveled to HS 721x, the Stephen D. McSweeny School in the Bronx. This is a special education school that sought assistance this year because the faculty and staff needed help sorting files, painting new pieces of art, and planting flowers for the spring.
            Students who participated in this year’s Paint-A-School day represented many different groups, clubs, organizations, and schools at Pace. Along with Honors college, students from Lambda Sigma National Honor Society (Pleasantville and NYC), Alpha Phi Delta Fraternity Inc., S.N.A.P, HIV/AIDS taskforce, A.S.A.P and OLAS participated in the event. Students split up into three different groups for the day. One group worked on cleaning up storage spaces and organizing the school’s files. This was something that the school desperately needed assistance with; as most teachers and other faculty do not have the time to do things other than teach and focus on their students rather than the upkeep of the school’s files etc. Another group planted flowers in the school’s garden. The last group painted on six foot drawings to be hung on the walls of the cafeteria as well as other spaces in the school. These drawings were important because they depicted children partaking in various activities including reading, walking to school and playing a sport. This was important because it not only helped to beautify the school, but it will also help to give students positive images to look at and follow. Each group also rotated so that everyone was able to do a little bit of each activity.
              This year’s Paint-A-School day went by very quickly thanks to the hard work of our volunteers. Even though this year’s activities involved more than just painting, I think that students did an amazing job and we hope that they understand how much of an impact their work will have on the students of McSweeny.