Community Service

Community service in Lower Division focuses on encouraging children to adopt habits of giving. Through outreach projects, school activities, and small group conversations, students explore values such as generosity, respect, kindness, commitment, passion, and integrity, which naturally complement all community service efforts.

Here are just a few examples of how Lower Division students give back.  

• Second Grade: Once a year, second grade students bring in ingredients and gather to make pumpkin bread (baked by SAGE Dining Services) to donate to the Berkeley Food Pantry. 

• Third Grade: On Valentine’s Day, third grade students make treat baskets for families staying at the Ronald McDonald House on Davis Islands.

• Fourth Grade: Fourth graders collaborate each year with Children’s Home Network, a nonprofit providing resources to at-risk children and families, as part of their fall service project. They bring in pumpkins, pillows, and various toiletries to donate. 

• Fifth grade: Fifth graders participate in a winter service project called The Berkeley Food Pantry Warmth and Wellness Drive. On the last day of school before Winter Break, they work together to assemble holiday bags full of hygiene items to donate, as well as some handmade holiday ornaments.

Middle Division students spend six full school days doing community service activities. The purpose of the Middle Division community service program is to provide opportunities for students to learn about themselves and their community. It cultivates a spirit of social responsibility and encourages students to contemplate and appreciate the rewards of a lifelong commitment to giving back. To see our Middle Division students in action, check out this photo gallery. 

On their Community Service Days:

• Sixth grade: Students travel by foot or bus to one of seven service sites: Sweetwater Park, Perrone Park, Berkeley’s Center for Environmental Research and Experiential Science (on Bray Road), Change Makers (an on-campus venue), Sweetwater Organic Community Farm, the Florida Learning Garden, and Water Testing (also on campus). Groups rotate through these venues, one venue per service outing. 

• Seventh grade: Students rotate between seven different venues: Just Elementary School, Feeding Tampa Bay, Dover Exceptional Center, Dickenson Elementary School, Metropolitan Ministries, and Arbor Terrace (an assisted-living facility). Seventh graders also recently worked with Tampa Bay Troop Support (see photo gallery) to sort and package items for soldiers deployed around the world.

• Eighth grade: Students choose a service site at the beginning of the year and go there during each service outing. The venues are Hudson Manor Assisted Living Facility, Hope Children’s Home, Bay Crest Elementary School, Dickenson Elementary School, Dover Exceptional Center, Inspired Living Memory Care Center, and three Hillsborough County Head Start Centers.

Middle Division students also engage in environmental service projects in Berkeley’s Center for Environmental Research and Experiential Sciences (known as CERES). In sixth grade, students grow plants and donate them to the Berkeley Food Pantry. 

International Trips: 

• Dominican Republic Service Learning: Each February, 35 to 40 eighth graders and their Berkeley chaperones spend five days in the Dominican Republic, performing community service at the Cigar Family Charitable Foundation School. The school, near Bonao, educates impoverished children from surrounding villages. Our students interact with these children, learning about their lives during supervised school activities. In addition, Berkeley students spend an afternoon in one of the villages, building and dispensing water filters.

• Bahama Books

  Each February, 15 eighth graders, joined by Upper Division student leaders and teacher chaperones, travel to Nassau, Bahamas, for the Bahama Books service project. The group establishes a library at a Nassau public elementary school, shelving and digitally cataloging approximately 2,500 fiction and nonfiction titles that are collected prior to the trip. Berkeley participants also teach library-use lessons to the Bahamian students. Alumnus Elias Tsavoussis ’16 started this service initiative as an Upper Division student recipient of Berkeley’s 50th Anniversary Service Scholar Award. Elias planted the first library at Nassau’s Columbus Primary School. Many of the books are sourced from the Berkeley Parents’ Association’s Share the Love of Reading annual book drive. 

Students in Upper Division curate and design their own community service path as they seek to make a positive difference in the world.

Service in Berkeley’s Upper Division is guided by a Student Service Council, which is made up of representatives from tenth through twelfth grade. Each student is required to complete and submit documentation for community service hours. Students in ninth through eleventh grade must complete at least 22 hours of community service each year. Students in twelfth grade are required to complete at least 10 hours of community service each year.

The Upper Division service experience culminates toward the end of a student’s senior year on Senior Buddy Day. Twelfth graders host children from the Redlands Christian Migrants Association (RCMA) on campus, engaging in games and activities that are planned and led by the senior class. This project brings the senior class together, reinforces their commitment to making a positive difference in the world, and provides a memorable experience for RCMA’s kids.