Young volunteers at Ravenna's Center of Hope get much out of giving

On Friday morning, a group of Ravenna High School students heads to a food pantry in town to volunteer for an hour or so.

"I go ahead and I do a food order from Akron-Canton [Regional] Food Bank," said Lajoyce Harris, program manager at Amelia DiGirolamo Center of Hope. "And, on Friday, they come in, unload that whole truck, they put everything away for me and then they organize some pantry items so we can get ready for the day."

Harris said Center of Hope depends heavily on volunteers, and in recent years has benefitted from efforts in several area school districts to get students involved.

"They are allowing us to be able to meet the demands of our pantry orders and our hot meal program," said Harris. "I only have five staff here, so we are made up of probably about 95% of volunteers to get our program through, and with the Hudson students and with the Crestwood students and Ravenna, they help us more when they come in here and it's great. It's great."

The students get something out of it, too. What that is can vary.

Ravenna students bring strength

Intervention Specialist Lisa Crislip is one of two Ravenna High School teachers who run the behavior resource classrooms.

"It is for students who are on an (Individualized Education Program), typically because they have an emotional disability or behavioral struggles," said Crislip.

She said the students often have extra challenges. Some are in transition to the high school setting, often coming from the LEAP Program, an alternative placement school in Kent, or from the Portage-Geauga County Juvenile Detention Center.

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"The kids receive social skills and emotional skills instruction here and then some of their instruction is in my room, and some go out into a general education setting," she said.

Crislip said students in her class started doing some periodic volunteer work at the Center of Hope last year, then more regularly this year. As many as 10 students might be at there at a time, especially during the holidays, but six or seven is the norm. They head over when Harris calls needing help.

"They sort and put away and break down and just kind of learn how it works. and they kind of do the heavy work," said Crislip.

Currently, the Ravenna students who work at Center of Hope are all boys in grades nine to 12.

"My boys can offer strength and youth, and they move fast. So Lajoyce calls us whenever they need trucks unloaded," said Crislip.

Crislip said the students get back even as they give, and that it is a learning experience.

"This is a good way for them to learn that they have a lot to give," she said. "They have strengths that they have used, they have energy, and they get to learn how a food pantry works. … It's a good social skills thing, also, to talk with these people that work there and talk with the people that come in."

Crestwood students learn independence

Harris said Crestwood students come in, typically five to 10 at a time, via the Portage County Board of Developmental Disabilities.

"They organize, they do a little bit of cleaning for us, they bag our beverages, they separate and organize our food if it comes in bulk," Harris said.

Tiffany Jones, Portage DD's community employment coordinator, said the effort is part of a program the agency has operated in the last few years called Building Independence.

"We go into the local school districts and we work with the students on different skills that are applicable for helping them transition and get ready for the next step after high school," said Jones.

Part of this effort is taking students out into the community, to "give them some real world experience," by letting them look at different jobs, as well as to volunteer.

Jones said Portage DD works with several districts, with mostly high school students. Crestwood students, she said, are in their first year at Center of Hope. Meanwhile, children in Southeast Schools volunteer at the Haven of Portage County shelter in Ravenna, while Waterloo Schools students go to Kent Social Services.

Jones said the volunteer work helps the students figure out what types of work they enjoy and what they're good at.

They track their tasks, to whom they reported, and their responsibilities.

"Then, when they graduate, they have something to put on a resume and are a little bit better prepared for that next step after graduation," she said.

While the students can initially be apprehensive, Jones said, the enjoy the ability to contribute, and build their confidence.

"I've also seen them just grow personally from maybe not having a lot of independence to by the end of the semester they are able to typically come in and they know what to do and they can get right to work and having that sense of independence," she said.

Hudson students are true volunteers

Martin Bach, a social studies teacher at Hudson High School, estimates students in his service learning class have been volunteering at Center of Hope for 15 years. The class has been an elective for seniors for 27 years.

"Our curriculum focuses on a lot of social issues, whether it be race, class, poverty, criminal justice, government funding, homelessness, things related to aging, medical with hospice," he said.

Each semester, students are divided in groups that volunteer around the region two days a week. In Portage County, this includes Center of Hope, Kent Social Services, Haven of Portage County and Head Start programs in Kent, Ravenna and Streetsboro.

"They see things at their sites that is able to inform a lot of the discussions or things in class and gives them, as seniors, a hands-on component. They actually get to do do something hands-on," said Bach.

Bach said that while Hudson has been characterized as a "bubble community" − meaning it tends to be "very homogenous." He said the course helps to counteract that.

"Part of the thing that we do with this is called breaking the bubble," he said. "(Students) get a much clearer picture of the world around them when they deal with issues. They see firsthand issues of poverty or malnutrition or homelessness or, you know, that Head Start students that come from poor households where they need that federal preschool. It opens their eyes to bigger issues in the world. Makes them a lot more worldly and more empathetic towards other people in different situations."

He recalled that one day last year while his students were volunteering at Center of Hope, a woman just released from a hospital was dropped off. She was disoriented and unsure about where she was going because she was homeless. The students then spent the day getting her some food, finding clothing at Center of Hope, getting her dressed, and fixing her hair. Meanwhile, Bach said, Harris arranged for the woman to go to a Summit County shelter.

"It's that kind of thing that they learn firsthand, seeing things like that," said Bach.

Agencies like Center of Hope get volunteers it can count on because the students in Harris' class really are volunteers. To take part, they have to fill out an application and go through an interview process.

"It's students who want to do service," he said. "I do not agree with mandatory community service to graduate, like some schools do. Because whenever I work with our social agencies, that's one of the things I tell them, if we get a new one; the students chose to do this, they wanted to be part of this program."

Harris said Center of Hope has long benefited from the volunteer efforts of youths, no matter what school district they come from.

"Our children in our community have always been a hand up for us and giving us services here and being a part of our volunteer programs," she said.

Reporter Jeff Saunders can be reached at jsaunders@recordpub.com.

This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: Students helping at Ravenna's Center of Hope giving, getting back