Encouraging idealism in action
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About Dartmouth Community Services
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VISTA Jobs at Tucker
Bike and Build
Bike and Build is a non-profit organization that raises money and
awareness for affordable housing by sending trips of college age students on
bicycles from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Dartmouth and Bike and Build have a
special relationship, as Dartmouth sends 15 students each year on the Northern
US trip, and 50% of the money raised on that trip goes to the Dartmouth chapter
of Habitat for Humanity. The trip runs from July 18 to August 25. Please visit
www.bikeandbuild.org and blitz "Bike and Build" for more
information.
 Overview
Dartmouth Community Services (DCS) is idealism in action. The
program facilitates local student community service outreach projects in the
Upper Valley region neighboring Dartmouth College.
DCS strives to make real the ideal that learning through serving others, and
by helping to build stronger, compassionate and more just communities, is at
the heart of a premier liberal arts experience. The program typically
hosts between forty and fifty ongoing, weekly or bi-weekly service projects and
referral relationships with local schools and social agencies, and also guides
student leaders to offer a variety of large service events and campus
celebrations.
The program provides approximately 40,000 hours of service annually, through
the passion and work of 1,200 students. Child and youth mentoring, food
and shelter, educational enrichment and community healthcare and fitness are
focal emphases in the program. Every week, students are building
affordable houses, cooking community dinners, mentoring area youth, tutoring
reading to adults and children, leading outdoor challenges, assisting in free
health clinics or visiting "adopted" grandparents.
Projects are student-led and managed, with assistance from Tucker foundation
staff advisors. As a forum for questioning and reflecting, as well as a
springboard for action, Dartmouth Community Services is a dynamic evolving
organization.
Community service is not selfless.
It’s something that you do with the initial intent of trying to help somebody,
but you as a community service provider, end up getting a lot more out of those
trips and sometimes even more I would say than the people that you actually go
to “help.” I think that one of the most important aspects of community service
is to come back to your respective community, to your respective school campus
and let them know what you learned, what you experienced.
—Elizabeth Mendoza ’08
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