AIDS/HIV
Peter’s Retreat
Contact: Dan Cosgrove ’08 (daniel.cosgrove@trincoll.edu)
Peter’s Retreat is an adult residence program that serves the HIV/AIDS population of Hartford that would otherwise not have housing or would have unsafe housing. Every two weeks volunteers to Peter’s Retreat to help with maintenance projects and serve dinner, but are also welcome to bring their own talents and interests to brighten the lives of the 26 residents and the house such as music/art or social activities, computers, playing card games, etc.
Books
Better World Books/Prison Book Program
Contact: Joe Barber, Director (jbarber@trincoll.edu)
The Office has established partnership with an organization called Better World Books (www.betterworldbooks.com) for all the books the members of the Trinity community are looking to dispose of, as well as books that students cannot sell back to the bookstore at the end of each semester. Better World Books is a sustainable social entrepreneurship project that funds global literacy initiatives by running book drives on college campuses. The literacy initiative that Trinity supports is the Prison Book Program (www.prisonbookprogram.org), an organization that promotes education and literacy by filling prisoner book requests. During the 2006-2007 academic year, we collected approximately 1100 books for the Prison Book Program through Better World Books.
Civic Involvement and Community Building
Annual Community Events Staff (ACES)
Contact: Danielle Grossman ’08 (danielle.grossman@trincoll.edu) and Andrea Chivakos ’08 (andrea.chivakos@trincoll.edu)
ACES runs most of the major annual community service events on campus, including Halloween on Vernon Street, Thanksgiving Food Basket Drive, Sponsor-A-Snowman, Hartford Interval House Holiday Party, Annual Auction for Charity, Souper Bowl, and Fun Fair.
Fred Pfeil Community Project (The Fred)
Contact: Stephanie Glover ’09 (stephanie.glover@trincoll.edu)
Begun at the start of the 2006-2007 academic year, the Fred Pfeil Community Project is a student-run campus living alternative named after beloved Professor of English, Fred Pfeil, who died of cancer in December 2005. The purpose of The Fred is to create a comfortable and vibrant space for all students to unite social, cultural, and intellectual interests, thereby enriching campus life. Housed in Summit East residence hall, the Fred sponsors weekly Friday night social events (e.g., open mic nights, art openings, movies, improvisational theater, etc.) and about a dozen theme groups, which include a wide range of academic and cultural topics, including feminism, hip-hop, spirituality, radical politics, current events, Scrabble, and cultural awareness. Each member is expected to be an active member in one of these themes, in addition to being a generally active presence in the Fred community.
Friends Active in Civic Engagement and Service (FACES)
Contact: Sarah Hoyle, Graduate Assistant (sarah.hoyle@trincoll.edu)
FACES is comprised of representatives from all the groups on campus who participate in some sort of community service or civic engagement work, the purpose of which is to provide student groups committed to service a place to meet, learn, and collaborate with each other.
Hartford Happenings Center
Contact: Joe Barber, Director (jbarber@trincoll.edu)
The Hartford Happening Center is located in the FACES Lounge, Mather basement, next to the Office of Community Service and Civic Engagement and contains information on dining, cultural, heritage, architectural, and news information related to Hartford. We also have a Hartford restaurant guide online at http://prog.trincoll.edu/ocsce
Lion's Club
Contact: Haley Lepo ’08 (haley.lepo@trincoll.edu)
The Trinity College Lions Club, chartered in April 2000, is the only college campus Lions Club in New England. Lions International, since 1917, has served the world’s population through hard work and a commitment to make a difference in the lives of people everywhere. Lions Clubs International is the world’s largest and most active service club organization and are particularly recognized worldwide for their service to the blind and visually impaired.
Trinity’s Lion’s Club participates in an organizes a range of service programs, including volunteering at the Berlin Fair, organizing a peace poster project at local middle schools, recycling printer and toner cartridges, collecting old eyeglasses for the visually impaired, and collecting cell phones for a local domestic violence shelter.
Praxis
Contacts: Ian Hendry ’08 (ian.hendry@trincoll.edu), Dan Hoyle ’09 (daniel.hoyle@trincoll.edu), and Becca Snyder ’07 (rebecca.snyder@trincoll.edu)
Praxis is a residence-based community service program established by and for students with the purpose of creating an environment that actively promotes and engages students in community involvement and building within the residence hall, on campus, and with the Hartford community.
Voting Initiative
Contact: Joe Barber, Director (jbarber@trincoll.edu)
The Office registers and educates Trinity students as Hartford voters, including processing registration cards, creating and continually updating a Trinity database, providing targeted information to those registered about election candidates and issues
Clothing
Clothing Donations
Contact: Joe Barber, Director (jbarber@trincoll.edu)
Throughout the year the Office of Community Service and Civic Engagement collects clothes from students, faculty, and staff on an ongoing basis as well as through events like Dump and Run and Get Naked with Praxis. These are then donated to local shelters. In most cases, the men’s clothes are given to the Immaculate Conception Shelter and the women’s and children’s clothes go to Hartford Interval House, a domestic violence shelter.
The 2006-2007 academic year was a bit of an anomaly as most of the clothes collected were donated to a local delegation traveling to South Sudan to assist in some local community-building. Over 2,400 articles of clothing were donated to this effort. The rest of the clothing was donated to the Salvation Army (277, most of which was women’s clothing) and Hartford Interval House (53 articles of children’s clothing). We also collected an assortment of sheets, blankets, and comforters that were donated to the Hartford Dog Pound.
English as a Second Language
ESL for Somalian-Bantu community (expected start of Fall 2007)
Contact: Joe Barber (jbarber@trincoll.edu), Alissa Phillips ’08 (alissa.phillips@trincoll.edu), and Jessica Hart ’08 (jessica.hart@trincoll.edu)
We are in the process of forging a relationship with the local Somalian Bantu community, with the hope that we can begin tutoring in their Saturday ESL program, held at Jubilee House.
Environment
ConnPIRG
Contact: Krystal Ramirez ’10 (krystal.ramirez@trincoll.edu)
The Trinity chapter of the Connecticut Public Interest Research Group is part of the State Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) which are a national network of nonprofit activist organizations that advocate for the public interest. ConnPIRG at Trinity College works with students to educate, advocate, and organize on issues ranging from poverty and consumer protection to environmental protection. ConnPIRG’ work in 2006-2007 included educating the campus about alternative energy, conservation, and climate change, registering new voters at Trinity and throughout Hartford, and raising awareness about and money for the organizations dedicate to alleviating hunger and homelessness.
Green Campus
Contact: Anne Bonfiglio ’10 (anne.bonfiglio@trincoll.edu) and Elisabeth Cianciola ’10 (elisabeth.cianciola@trincoll.edu)
Green Campus is dedicated to making Trinity a “greener” place and hence a good neighbor. Green Campus is dedicated to raising awareness about College’s environmental impacts and to undertake initiatives to reduce the impact. In this vein, Green Campus works on improving College recycling (new outdoor recycling bins on campus and a new website created about recycling), reducing food waste in the College cafeteria (Project Clean Plate), salvaging items disposed of by students at the end of the academic year (Dump and Run), buying “green” energy for special days at the College, planting trees, introducing locally-grown food in the College dining halls (see “Food” section below), and advocating for policies to make Trinity a more environmentally conscious campus.
Food
Community Cooking (expected start of Fall 2007)
Contact: Molly Goodwin ’09 (martha.goodwin@trincoll.edu)
Hillel, Mazon—A Jewish Response to Hunger, the Office, and Chartwells are collaborating to start a Trinity affiliate of Campus Kitchens Project. The Campus Kitchen schools commit to making a meal(s) on a regular basis for a local shelter or meals program, using their own school’s kitchens. An initial kick-off event was held in May 2007 and preparations are now being made for a more comprehensive rollout beginning with the Fall 2007 semester.
Holcomb Farm/Hartford Catholic Worker food salvage program
Contact: Joe Barber, Director (jbarber@trincoll.edu)
Holcomb Farm is a CSA farm (community supported agriculture) through which Hartford area households can buy shares and receive fresh, locally-grown, organic food June through October. One of the distribution options is a drop-off point in West Hartford on Tuesdays, and whatever is not picked up by CSA members is picked up by the Office and delivered to the Hartford Catholic Worker in north Hartford for its neighborhood food distribution on Wednesdays.
Farm-to-Cafeteria Project
Contact: Joe Barber, Director (jbarber@trincoll.edu)
Working with the Hartford Food System and Trinity’s food service provider, Chartwells, this project is endeavoring to introduce Connecticut grown produce into the College’s dining halls, with an initial kickoff taking place in the dining halls in the Fall 2005 semester. Since its inception, this program has allowed Chartwells to purchase over 30 tons of locally-grown produces for its dining halls.
Housing
Habitat for Humanity
Contact: Emma Etheridge ’08 (emma.etheridge@trincoll.edu)
Trinity’s Habitat for Humanity is dedicated ensuring the right of every person to have simple, decent housing. With this in mind, the Trinity chapter of Habitat engages in building, education, and fundraising, that included the following during the 2006-2007 year:
¨ Co-sponsoring a Hartford house, which included raising $25,000 and biweekly work on the house. Claudette Jumpp and five of her children will be moving into the house in July 2007.
¨ Fundraising, including our 4th annual 5K Habitrot, Valentine’s Day carnation sales, care package and linen sales, 50/50 raffles at sporting events, and spare change drives.
¨ An alternative Spring Break Trip (see “Annual Events” for more details).
¨ Started annual commitment to tithe to Habitat International efforts. In 2006-2007, Trinity’s Habitat chapter tithed $1,000 to the South Africa Habitat affiliate.
Human Rights and Health Activism
Amnesty International
Contact: Naila Eisa ’09 (naila.eisa@trincoll.edu) and Sarah Gardiner ’10 (sarah.gardiner@trincoll.edu)
Campus chapter of worldwide movement of people who campaign for internationally recognized human rights. AI’s vision is a world in which every person enjoys all the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights standards.
During the 2006-2007 academic year, Trinity’s AI chapter worked with ConnPIRG to raise awareness about world hunger issues by sponsoring a very successful Hunger Banquet, continued to promote the importance of fair trade, sponsored a neighborhood block party, and started a very active and successful immigrant rights’ campaign that has sponsored panel discussions, lectures, demonstrations, etc., in support of undocumented residents in Connecticut who have been arrested and risk deportation.
Darfur Coalition
Contact: Cara Pavlak ’09 (cara.pavlak@trincoll.edu)
The Darfur Coalition came together during the 2004-2005 academic year to raise awareness on campus of and affect change around the issue of what is generally agreed to be a genocide taking place in the Darfur region of Sudan. Over the past couple of years the Darfur coalition has sponsored lectures and movie screenings, held vigils, conducted letter-writing campaigns, and even raised money for two members of the local Catholic Worker community to travel to Sudan.
In addition to this work, the Darfur Coalition has conducted a college divestment campaign. Through research, meetings with the Secretary of the College, and petition drives, the campaign was a success, and on May 20, 2006, the Trinity College Board of Trustees voted unanimously in favor of a policy of divestment of investments in Sudan. A second resolution was approved by the Trustees at their December meeting that addressed some problems in the first resolution, and, in so doing, more fully affirmed the spirit of that initial resolution, and ultimately resulted in the divestment of Trinity’s Sudan-related investments by April 2007.
Relay for Life
Contact: Sarah Hoyle (x2383)
For more information about the Relay for Life organization, look at “April” in the “Annual Projects” section.
Students to Unite Science and Humanitarian Interests (SUSHI)
Contact: Carrie Edwards ’08 (carolyn.edwards@trincoll.edu) and Jessica Hart ’08 (jessica.hart@trincoll.edu)
SUSHI, begun in the 2001-2002 year, has the goal of integration, education, and advocacy on issues that concern both "humanities" students and "science" students, primarily in the area of human rights. In the past year, SUSHI has raised money for and participated in the annual AIDS Walk and sponsored a lecture on health disparities in the state, with a specific focus on Hartford. In addition, SUSHI organized activities in commemoration of World AIDS Day (for more information, see “December” of the “Annual Projects” section), as well as sponsoring a movie about microbicides and a screening of Darfur Diaries during Trinity’s Human Rights Week.
Students Organized for Disability Awareness (SODA)
Contact: Haley Kimmet ’08 (haley.kimmet@trincoll.edu)
Students Organized for Disability Awareness (SODA) is a newly established student organization on campus is intended to be a forum dedicated to representing the rights of individuals with disabilities on the Trinity campus. The organization also aims to promote events, programs, projects, and volunteer opportunities that support disability advocacy and diversity efforts throughout the Trinity campus and the surrounding Hartford community.
Voices Organized in Democracy (VOID)
Contact: Gwen Hopkins ’08 (gwendolyn.hopkins@trincoll.edu) and Carrie Edwards ’08 (Carolyn.edwards@trincoll.edu)
VOID is a student activist organization that provides a place for progressive students to come together, share their ideas, educate one another and the Trinity community, and take action. Among the activities in which VOID has been engaged are participating in the anti-corporate globalization demonstrations, anti-war “die-ns”, political street theater, marching in solidarity with union workers at Yale, supporting the Trinity food service workers in their contract renegotiations, and helping to get out the vote in Ohio before the 2004 Presidential election with America Coming Together (ACT) and MoveOn.
In 2006-2007 academic year, VOID worked on getting Trinity to be “sweatshop-free”, canvassed with the Connecticut Working Families Party on behalf of Congressional candidate, Chris Murphy, supported AI’s immigration campaign, sponsored a screening of The Corporation on May Day, and helped organize a community block party at the Boys and Girls Club.
Intellectual Disabilities
Best Buddies
Contact: Bianca Sims ’08 (bianca.sims@trincoll.edu)
Trinity College Best Buddies is a chapter of Best Buddies International. The mission of Best Buddies is to enhance the lives of people with intellectual disabilities by providing opportunities for one to one friendships and integrated employment.
The Trinity Best Buddies chapter requires a one-year commitment and pairs people in the community who have intellectual disabilities with college students with the intent of creating new friendships. These “buddy” pairings meet monthly and call each other weekly. There are also a number of large group outings each semester that bring together all the buddies and college students.
Transportation
U-Pass
Contact: Joe Barber, Director (jbarber@trincoll.edu)
The U-Pass is partnership established to benefit all Trinity College students. Through this program, each Trinity student receives a U-Pass (a new one is issued each semester) good for free and unlimited use on CT Transit local service buses, with no out-of-pocket cost. In the 2006-2007 academic year over 15,000 Trinity rides were recorded as a result of the U-Pass (up from approximately 12,000 in 1999-2000).
Youth
Artistic Expressions
Contact: Jasmin Agosto ’10 (jasmin.agosto@trincoll.edu)
Artistic Expressions was founded during the 2004-2005 academic year by Susan Botzko ’07 as an after-school arts program, held at the Charter Oak Cultural Center. The program takes place 3 days a week with most of children coming from the Betances Elementary School. A program day can consist of painting, drawing, making sculptures, and even sometimes learning some guitar and piano. Projects have included collaborations with other local artists and organizations and projects for Charter Oak such as making signs for events, and mural painting.
Big Brothers/Big Sisters
Contacts: Steven Netcoh ’09 (steven.netcoh@trincoll.edu)
This project is partnership between Nutmeg Big Brothers/Big Sisters, the Trinity College Boys and Girls Club, and Trinity College which allows Trinity students and Hartford children to establish a one-on-one mentor/mentee relationship without the usual commitment required by the traditional Big Brothers/Big Sisters program.
Boys and Girls Club, 1500 Broad Street
Contact: Tauheedah Muhammad, Unit Director (tmuhammad@bgchartford.org)
The Trinity Boys & Girls is one of the few clubs in America associated with a college campus. It is located close to campus, within walking distance. Students volunteer in whole variety of capacities including, tutoring, sports, dance, leadership programs, and arts and crafts. About 25-30 students volunteer here regularly.
Dream Camp Mentoring Program
Contacts: Melissa Soroka (msoroka@esfdreamcamp.org)
Dream Camp Summer Camp has been at Trinity for ten years now and its year long mentoring program now entering its ninth year. This program is an after school initiative that offers tutoring help and academic enrichment to Dream Campers during the school year. The program runs Monday through Thursday and serves about 50 students, aged 6-14, with over thirty Trinity mentors from Trinity participating.
Rising Stars Program
Contact: Romulus Ferrer-Perez (romulus.perez@trincoll.edu)
Rising Stars provides homework help and academic mentoring to students at the Hartford Magnet Middle School (HMMS). Rising Stars was started in the Fall of 2002 as a result of there being many more people desiring academic mentoring that could not be accommodated by the Vision Academic Mentoring Program (see below). The program meets twice a week for a total of three hours and 25 Trinity mentors serve 25-30 HMMS students.
Vision Academic Mentoring Program
Contact: Romulus Ferrer-Perez (romulus.perez@trincoll.edu)
The Vision Academic Mentoring Program (V.A.M.P.) provides homework help, mentoring and academic enrichment activities to HMMS students. About 15 Trinity mentors serve approximately 25 HMMS students two days a week for a total of four hours. This program is funded through a grant from the Marie and John Zimmermann Foundation.