Elizabethtown College designated Wednesday, March 3, to be a Day of Service in alignment with the College’s motto: Educate for Service.

Classes were canceled to allow the campus community to participate in service-oriented projects focused on food insecurity, physical health and mental wellness throughout the day. The event was sponsored by the Office of the Chaplain and Religious Life, the Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Title IX, the Center for Global Understanding and Peacemaking and the Center for Community and Civic Engagement.

The College partnered with Unto, a Cru Ministry that focuses on humanitarian work. Throughout the Day of Service, campus community members packed rice and bean meals for refugee families that are experiencing food insecurity as part of Unto’s PackHope Experience. Sessions were held in the KAV at 10:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m., 2:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.

To aid the homeless population in Harrisburg, campus community members created plarn mats, which are mats made of yarn upcycled from plastic bags. Prior to the Day of Service, the Center for Community and Civic Engagement collected plastic grocery bags to make the plarn.

As noted by the College, “these mats provide a sanitary place for those in need to rest and sleep.” The mats will then be donated to the Bethesda Mission, an organization that aids the homeless community in Harrisburg.

From 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., campus community members were also able to participate in Wellness Day at the Bowers Center for Sports, Fitness and Well-being. The event focused on mental health and wellness as participants wrote postcards to boost one another’s mental health and express gratitude for each other.

The Day of Service also focused on the environment as campus community members were invited to plant native plants to help prepare pollinator plants for the Lancaster Schoolyard Habitat program, which focuses on STEM skills as students design and install a pollinator garden at their school.

Participants were also invited to list projects as “other” if they, or their group, had planned to do another project. Dr. Gene Ann Behrens, a professor in the music therapy department, led a project alongside junior music therapy major Julie Nitowski and other music therapy students to create a sing-a-long video for residents at Masonic Village, a long-term care facility in Elizabethtown, Pa.

In normal circumstances, music therapy students at the College go to the Masonic Village on Martin Luther King Jr. Day for a day of service and break into small groups to play music; however, they were limited due to COVID-19. As noted by Behrens, they worked with the organizers from the music therapy program at Masonic Village to “uplift [the residents’] spirits” and developed the idea for a sing-a-long video.

Behrens described the students involved as a “really resilient group of students” and noted how making music is challenging during the pandemic, especially as it is “hard to do on Zoom.”

In long-term care facilities, music therapy is used in the forms of playing instruments and sing-a-longs, and builds upon motor functioning skills and musical skills, such as singing, in general. Primarily, music therapists focus on music familiar to the residents, so as to allow them to reminisce, and Behrens noted the therapeutic values of music as it allows older people to connect to “emotions from their youth” and build “strong pathways for memory.”

“It’s powerful and builds a relationship with them through music therapy,” Nitowski said.

Over 200 students participated in the Day of Service. In regard to why the College partnered with the organizations, program coordinator for the Center for Community and Civic Engagement Sharon Sherick said, “In part, these were folks for whom we had an already established and meaningful partnership, which provided room for creativity to create meaningful opportunities to engage students in service within our COVID guidelines. Excitedly, what came about in the time we had to plan were both projects with local impact as well one with global impact. Though with the notes of gratitude, we hope to reach out to thank our many partners in meaningful ways for the work they are doing.”