Alex Zhang

Student volunteers cheerfully gather in Parrish Circle, where a van took them into Chester on Saturday morning for National Gaming Day.

BY DYLON CHOW

In print | Published November 20, 2008

On Saturday, Nov. 15, student volunteers for Saturdays of Service went to J. Crozer Library in Chester for the American Library Association’s first annual National Gaming Day @ Your Library, an event designed to appeal to elementary-school-age children. Volunteers in the program, sponsored by the Lang Center, set up games, played with and supervised the young participants. The event was partially intended to expose traditionally underserved groups to the resources offered by public libraries. “I think the idea was to provide a fun day, promote the library as a safe space and a place to go to and to make it a more lively environment,” Rebekah Judson ’12, a coordinator for Saturdays of Service, said.

Participants in the program were overwhelming pleased with the array of card games, board games, video games and face painting included in the scheduled activities. “It was definitely successful,” Rosario Paz ’10, a member of Rotaract who also attended the event, said. “There was a wide range of activities. It wasn’t tutoring or reading books. It was a time for kids to enjoy themselves,” she said.

The ALA coordinated two major events on National Gaming Day. One was a nation-wide video game tournament during which kids played games like Rock Band, Dance Dance Revolution and Super Smash Brothers against other kids from other parts of the country. The ALA also arranged a donation of Pictureka, a children’s board game, to every public library branch in the country. The goal was to set a record for the most number of people playing the same board game on the same day.

Judson appreciated the opportunity to work with people outside of Swarthmore. “I liked getting to work with kids in community and making connections with the local community,” she said.
Saturdays of Service is a volunteer organization that was started two years ago by Virginia Tice ’09 and Teresa Kelley ’07. Unlike many student-run volunteer organizations, Saturdays of Service coordinates a variety of one-time service projects twice a month in local areas including Swarthmore, Chester and Philadelphia. In the past, volunteers through Saturdays of Service have worked for Habitat for Humanity and the Villanova Special Olympics Festival and have also packed books at Books Through Bars, an organization that provides donated reading material for prisoners.

Jeff Cao ’10, one of the Saturdays of Service coordinators, said that Saturdays of Service projects allow students to volunteer as their schedules permit, unlike tutoring activities which require committing to a fixed weekly schedule. “There’s no pressure and no obligation for a weekly commitment,” he said. “I feel like a lot of students want to be more connected to the community, but service projects during the weekdays often conflict with their schedules.”

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