By Valeria Benitez
A week after SING,, I met with Ms. Turner in her office, in the community center, and couldn’t help but notice a big Atlanta map on the wall next to her desk with all SING service locations. Curious enough I asked if that was this year’s map, but she pointed out that it was actually one from two years ago, and how they did not make one for this year.
SING, which stands for Service Initiation for Ninth Grade, began in 1995. This year, each advisory volunteered at a library, by serving cookies and tea to senior citizens in the community, and then visited other non-profit organizations near their library, ending their day with dinner with their Pals. Day two was considered the “shorter” day when each advisory volunteered at a non-profit location and then had lunch with the advisory. The sleepover in a church is still a thing of the past.
My interview with Ms. Turner actually took a twist because she started off by interviewing me. She wanted to know all about my experience and how the trip was. “Did you enjoy SING?” she asked me. “What locations did you volunteer at? Did you make any connections with the communities?”
I told her how I not only enjoyed the opportunity to work with communities in Atlanta but also with my advisory. At the beginning, I wondered if I’d be able to connect with my advisory since I thought we had nothing to relate to, but after two days of hard work in the sun I can tell you that at the very least, the one thing we related to was wanting to get home and shower.
Freshman Grace Schmidt told me how she enjoyed the first day of SING since “It was really fun and our advisory connected but the second day kinda started to get repetitive.”
As you might imagine, it’s a big challenge for Ms. Turner, as the director of the SING program, to line up non-profit organizations that can welcome each advisory on a specific date (in this case September 21-22). Ms. Turner along with Mrs. Piña had to plan for 152 students and 30 adults, so they could have their own unique experiences and tell different stories. They want “every group to have a meaningful experience, but because we’re dealing with so many different community partners, it’s hard.”
To minimize stress and last-minute changes, Ms. Turner and Ms. Piña start planning the trip for incoming freshmen in January by “reaching out to partners and trying to set them up for next year.”
This year they reached out to about 55 organizations and only worked with 45 organizations because 10 of them were not able to have us help out since they already had a group coming.
Planning is definitely not always easy, but do you know what else isn’t easy? Having to garden in the heat. When my advisor announced that gardening was one of the activities that we had to do, I immediately told myself “This is going to be the worst,” but after experiencing SING and gardening I felt that I came back more knowledgeable and it wasn’t that bad.
Ms. Turner believes that the best part about SING is that you will always remember your trip. She told me she still remembers her first trip in 2019 which also happened to be the year she moved to Atlanta. Not only did SING help her form new connections and relationships, but being new to Atlanta, SING helped her explore parts of the Atlanta community that she didn’t know.
She hopes that SING will encourage students to seek out future volunteer opportunities. The name of the organization might not always hook you into wanting to participate, but hopefully, SING makes you want to volunteer, she added.
Between classes, I caught up with freshman Zoë Shields, who told me that “It was great being able to serve and give back to my community” since SING “really emphasized how important volunteer work is and being able to help those around you grow.”
Before Zoë could be interrupted by the bell, Grace Schmidt came in. Hearing we were talking about SING, she told me her favorite part was having dinner with her senior PALS after a long day volunteering. Each advisory got to pick a restaurant where they wanted to eat. Grace said that her advisory went to Rodney Scott Barbeque.
Hearing all these different stories made me realize how SING is not the same for everybody. Every advisory came back with different stories, some more positive than others. Caroline Nelson told me that her advisory ate at a restaurant in front of a prison, which she described as“very scary” but definitely an unforgettable experience.
The only thing that everyone seemed to agree on was how amazing dinner with their PALS was at the restaurant of their choice.
Grace seemed to like her restaurant the best because she said, with a lot of enthusiasm, “Oh my gosh, the food was so good.”
