Service Opportunities
Registration links are listed at the bottom of each description. Students are encouraged register for multiple service events. For opportunities with multiple sessions (Gaining Ground, Land Trust, and Open Table), please limit your selection to one session date.
Cradles to Crayons
Description: Cradles to Crayons provides children from birth through age 12 living in homeless or low-income situations with the essential items they need to thrive - at home, at school and at play. Cradles to Crayons collects new and nearly new children's items through grassroots community drives and corporate donations. Donations are then processed and packaged by volunteers, and are distributed to disadvantaged children across the state through a collaborative network of social service agencies and school partners.
Fenn students involved with this project will plan with the clothing drive to collect donations to be delivered to the Cradles to Crayons Giving Factory Warehouse. We have scheduled a Fenn Family Day at the Cradles to Crayons Giving Factory warehouse where we get to roll up our sleeves and help disadvantaged young children in Massachusetts by inspecting, sorting, and packaging all new and like-new donations into customized “KidPacks.”
Please contact Sabrina Napoli or Melissa Hughes at if you are an adult interested in coordinating or helping out with this project.
Crop Walk
Description: The Concord Crop Walk is a 7km walk through historic Concord center. CROP Hunger Walks are "Communities Responding to Overcome Poverty"-- neighbors walking together to take a stand against hunger in our world. Funds raised by the Concord area CROP Walk go for worldwide emergency relief of disasters, such as floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes; for refugee aid; and for fighting the root causes of hunger through community development programs in 80 underdeveloped countries. In addition, one quarter of the funds raised provide substantial contributions to ten local food pantry programs.
Please contact Winnie Smith if you are an adult interested in coordinating and/or chaperoning this project.
Gaining Ground
Grades: Lower and Middle School
Day/Time: Tuesdays 1-3pm throughout most of the fall and the spring trimesters. Lower and Middle Schoolers participate on alternating Tuesdays. Boys can buy pizza or bring a lunch to eat at Fenn before departing around 1:30. Groups of 10-14 boys participate at a time.
Description: Gaining Ground is a “soup kitchen garden” here in Concord which produces organically grown fruits and vegetables that are donated to local food pantries (such as Open Table Pantry) and various area shelters. In the fall we help harvest crops and prepare the garden beds for their winter rest. In the spring we plant seeds and seedlings. Each year, with the help of volunteer labor, they are able to donate thousands of pounds of produce to food pantries and shelters. Michelle Heaton and Winnie Smith chaperone the Gaining Ground visits.
Green Team
Grades: Lower
Description: Green Team is a team of Lower School boys that help with recycling efforts across the school. The boys assist with collecting the bins across the campus and emptying them in the tall brown toters. This requires a commitment of one day per week where the boys grab their lunch and then complete their task for about twenty minutes. This helps our maintenance staff immensely and is a huge part of Fenn's commitment to sustainability.
Heading Home
Grades: All
Description: Over the last few years, thanks to the efforts of Ewing, Solomon, and other Fenn families, we were able to participate in a quite extraordinary event. Many Fenn students and their families spent the morning cleaning and completely setting up (furniture, wall hangings, toiletries, food in the cupboards and refrigerator, etc.) an apartment in Dorchester for a homeless family. Heading Home’s mission is to end homelessness in Greater Boson by providing housing in conjunction with effective support services to help change the conditions that create homelessness. Over two thousand homeless and low-income people were served by one or more of their programs in the last year. They placed 112 families and 58 individuals into permanent, supportive housing and 90% of the residents in their permanent housing programs remained successful housed.
In addition to helping support 1-2 “up and out” moves, Fenn will provide opportunities for groups of students to sponsor birthday and/or holiday parties for Heading Home families. If you are a parent willing to coordinate a party sponsorship activity/drive for your son’s advisor group, class, or grade, please contact Michelle Heaton or Winnie Smith.
Due to the popularity of the Up & Out Moves and the limited space in the apartments we are setting up, we are requesting participants on move day be limited to Fenn boys and one parent.
Land Conservation Trust
Grades: Lower School
Day/Time: On Tuesdays, we eat a “bag” or pizza lunch at school and leave to get to one of the Land Trust properties by 1:15 p.m. We return to Fenn for pickup at 3:00 p.m.
Description: The Concord Land Conservation Trust, a non-profit organization run by dedicated volunteers to preserve the town’s natural heritage, owns some of the nicest “green spaces” in Concord. It relies on volunteer individuals and groups to help maintain its properties. Over the past several years, groups of lower schoolers grabbed rakes, shovels and pruners to help create and maintain trails, repair damage caused by dirt bikes, and to help remove harmful invasive plants. We can take up to fifteen lower school student volunteers each time. Mr. Smith chaperones our Land Trust outings.
Open Table
Grades: 6-9
Day/Time: Tuesday afternoons twice a month. Ms. Mott will drive boys to Maynard, leaving Fenn at 3:30 and returning at 5pm.
Description: Open Table Pantry is located at the Unitarian church in Concord. Open Table provides dinner and a bag of groceries to those in our community who need help acquiring food. Fenn vans transport 150-200 bags of groceries to the church from where the food is stored (near the Armory). Our contribution to the overall effort is important and very much appreciated. It is our hope that during the year the majority of our middle schoolers will help at least once with this service activity.
In addition to helping transport groceries, Fenn also supports Open Table with a canned food drive - coordinated by the school senate - and holiday turkey drive each November. Parent volunteers are needed to help transport these goods to the pantry during the drive. Please contact Fenn PA liaison Sufia Jamal if you are an adult interested in helping out with this project.
Pine Street Inn Blanket Sewing
Grades: All
Description: This is a really fun one-time activity. You do not need to know how to sew in order to participate! Last year we made over one hundred blankets, hats, neck warmers, mittens, and scarves which we donated to the Outreach Van at the Pine Street Inn. The van delivers blankets, medicine, coffee, soup, sandwiches, and hot chocolate to homeless people on the streets of Boston at night. They really appreciate our donation--sewn from thick, brand new fleece bought with money raised by the Student Senate. This is a fun and very rewarding activity, and a Fenn tradition. Boys who participate in this activity will also have the opportunity to volunteer to drop off our donation and tour Pine Street Inn. This service opportunity is generously coordinated by 1-2 Fenn families each year.
Walk for Hunger
Grades: All
Description: Each year on the first Sunday in May, Mrs. MacLellan leads "Team Fenn" in the Walk for Hunger. Last year, about thirty Fenn boys participated in the twenty mile walk, raising several thousand dollars in pledges for Project Bread. Project Bread is the state's leading anti-hunger organization, providing millions of dollars each year to more than 400 emergency food programs in 128 communities statewide. The boys get a great workout for a great cause.
Concord Clean Up Day
Grades: All
Description: In preparation for Concord's Patriots Day celebration, the Natural Resources Commission encourages participation in Concord Cleanup Week. Each year, Fenn does its part. After school on the Tuesday before Patriots Day, we will take volunteers with litter bags in hand on a cleanup walk around Fenn and our surrounding area. The route we take will be weather dependent, but includes some important sections along roads that the town really wants looking good for the annual celebration.
Volunteers will eat a bag lunch or pizza at school and set out for cleanup by 1/1:15pm. We return to Fenn for pickup at 3pm.
Blanket Making for Iditarod Dogs
Grades: Lower School
Description: After researching and following the Iditarod Race in Alaska for the second year, we realized who are the real heroes of this race: the dogs! Join us as we make cozy fleece blankets for the mushers to use for their dogs during training runs and during the actual race. We will be measuring, cutting, folding and packaging the blankets for shipment to Alaska.
Dream Team for Senior Citizens
Grades: All
Description: Some senior citizens still live in their home, but do not have the physical ability to do all the work to maintain their property. These individuals can request a “Dream Team” to come to their homes do such things as raking leaves, trimming shrubs, turning over mattresses, and bringing lawn furniture into or out of the basement.
OARS
Grades: All
Description: OARS volunteers will walk along the banks and wade into the Assabet, Sudbury, and Concord Rivers and tributaries to continue the effort to restore our beautiful river. Trash, tires, bottles, car parts, bicycles – whatever we find that shouldn't be there – will be collected for more appropriate disposal. There is lots of work to be done.
This September morning of dirty, satisfying work has become a regional tradition for individuals and teams from local businesses, civic associations, scout troops, and high schools. We will be working in Westborough, Northborough, Framingham, Wayland, Sudbury, Marlborough, Hudson, Stow, Maynard, Acton, Concord, and Billerica. The cleanup will be followed by a pizza lunch and celebration along the rivers
We hope that Fenn School students and parents will join us in Concord this year. The meeting location will be decided in September. OARS provides work gloves and bags for collecting the trash. We require and will provide permission slips for students to get their parent’s signature. We ask all participants to wear long pants and shoes that can get wet and very dirty.
For more information and to volunteer please contact the OARS office at 978-369-3956, email, or visit our website.
OARS is the watershed organization working to protect, improve, and preserve the Assabet, Sudbury, and Concord Rivers, their tributaries and watersheds for the purposes of public recreation, water supply, and wildlife habitat.
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