Vail Christian High School students spend 2 days volunteering throughout Eagle County
The volunteer days, called Saints PLuS, are tied into a push the school is making toward building its service-related curriculum
Vail Christian High School/Courtesy photo
On Monday and Tuesday of last week, 158 Vail Christian High School students, plus 17 faculty members, did not go to class.
Instead, they headed out throughout Eagle County to spend two days serving their community by volunteering at various organizations.
Split into small groups, students and faculty spent about 10 hours total across the two days volunteering at 10 organizations.
“That equates to about 1700 hours of service, all in two days,” said Daniel Hartmann, who organized the days of volunteering. “If one person were to do that continuously, not stopping for sleep or eating or anything else, it would be about 73 days’ worth of continuous volunteering for one person. The impact was quite widely spread, and, I hope, deeply felt by those organizations.”
Saints PLuS days encourage students to serve their community
The days of service are called Saints PLuS days, named for Vail Christian’s mascot and the motivating slogan behind the volunteering effort. PLuS stands for Purpose, Leadership, Service, with “you” (u) in the middle.
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Last year, the junior class did a handful of service projects locally, and two groups partnered with international organizations.
This year, Vail Christian leadership decided to engage every student at the school in service, and to focus its impact locally.
Students volunteered at the Community Market, Salvation Army, Mountain Valley Horse Rescue, Vail Library, Trinity Church, Walking Mountains Science Center, YouthPower365, SOS Outreach, The Vail Church and Vail Christian High School.
Despite the large amount of wealth concentrated in Eagle County, there is still need for aid that “a lot of students don’t see or overlook,” Hartmann said.
“What I hope they got out of it was to see how much need there is in the valley for work efforts, and how rewarding giving up your time and labor can be to serve your community,” Hartmann said. “A sense of pride and connectedness to the community is something I hope every student took with them.”
Students were assigned to their volunteering sites based on the number of helpers the organizations needed. “That’s another lesson I want students to take from this. … No matter where you go, you are helping,” Hartmann said.
Every sophomore and junior spent a day at Mountain Valley Horse Rescue in McCoy, which mostly involved shoveling manure and moving hay.
“If you are scooping horse manure, it may not be glamorous, it may not feel like you are helping someone, but you are enabling the staff to go and save more horses because they are not scooping horse manure,” Hartman said. “A 15-year-old is not necessarily able to run a nonprofit organization, but a 15-year-old can scoop horse manure, and all of that is helpful in the grand scheme of things.”
Above all, Hartmann said, he wants students to have gained a better sense of how the organizations are run, so they can suggest others use and support their services. “We hope that they learn to advocate for these organizations,” he said.
Vail Christian High School aims to make service a bigger part of its curriculum
The Saints PLuS days are part of Vail Christian High School’s push to make service a bigger part of its curriculum.
Hartmann teaches U.S. Government and Politics and Psychology to juniors and seniors at Vail Christian. But he was hired last year to build the school’s service programming.
“My dream for PLuS days is that Vail Christian becomes just as well-known for its service as for its academics and athletics,” Hartmann said. “I would love for Vail Christian to be an inspiration and a catalyst for the valley at large to serve each other more.”
Vail Christian students learn about service in their theology class, and Hartmann spoke at a few Wednesday Chapel sessions, connecting the PLuS days to the theological and practical elements of service.
“The more we pour into each other, the more vibrant and beautiful our community is going to be,” Hartmann said. “I very much hope and intend for Vail Christian to be in the middle of that.”
There will be more spring Saints PLuS days in Vail Christian’s future. There may even be fall service days, as well, beginning as soon as this upcoming fall.
Hartmann asked for organizations in need of volunteers to reach out to him.
“We are willing and would love to work with any organization that could use our labor,” he said. “We want our impact to be as wide and deeply felt as possible.”
Daniel Hartman can be reached at dhartmann@vchsweb.org.
