As the pandemic continues to cause widespread medical, economic, and social upheaval, senior citizens and underserved communities have never been more vulnerable. Volunteers are especially critical right now, but they also pose an infection risk to the very people and communities they serve. Many organizations that Riverdale supports, such as City Meals On Wheels, the Challenged Athletes Foundation, and Part of the Solution (POTS), are grappling with this vexing paradox. Director of Service-Learning Ms. Rachel Klein elaborated on this challenge recently in her speech during the annual Riverdale Community Action Day (RCAD), which was held virtually this year. “In response to the global pandemic...Riverdale’s service-learning program looks quite different this year. Our students, advisors, faculty, and staff have been tasked with coming up with new creative and meaningful ways to engage with our longstanding community partners,” she said. Many of those community partners are located in the South Bronx, where nearly two-fifths of residents are food-insecure, which qualifies as the highest rate in the country.

Ms. Dolma spoke at length about Riverdale’s amazing relationship with POTS, a non-profit community center in the Bronx that provides underserved local and largely minority residents with healthy meals, career counseling, and tutoring, as well as legal, mental, and hygienic services. “We’ve been working with POTS for more than fifteen years...we’ve been so fortunate to collaborate with them in many ways,” furthered Ms. Chime Dolma, Riverdale’s Assistant Director of Service Learning. One such way is through the “Family Club,” a program at the POTS center where Riverdale middle schoolers help children as young as five or six with homework assignments, tutoring, and fun activities like board games and drawing. While the children work with Riverdale volunteers, their parents can also receive cooking and nutritional tips in the POTS kitchen. 

POTS Executive Director Ms. Christina Hanson expressed joy about the success of the Family Club at RCAD: “The relationships that developed between the students in the Family Club and the Riverdale students who came to do homework help created such a strong bond that I kept getting questions asking [about] when they [could] come back.” Ms. Dolma emphasized that volunteering provides a “wonderful way for our middle school students to develop essential lifelong skills like working with younger students or learning how to be a leader in a real setting.” Although the Family Club can no longer be held in-person this year, Junior Julia Sidorsky, whom Ms. Dolma described as “a wonderful example of a student who has really cultivated an amazing six-year relationship with POTS,” has organized a weekly virtual Family Club starting December 9th. During their weekly Zoom meetings, Riverdale middle and high schoolers will virtually tutor, play, and talk with children at POTS in an effort to “try and maintain a sense of community and fun,” Sidorsky said.

Many students continue to be involved with POTS in high school. Junior Henry Yoon helped organize a musical performance for the recent POTS “Helping the Bronx Bounce Back” fundraiser, in which the organization raised thousands of dollars. Senior Lorenzo Tobin created a Zoom tutorial in Spanish to help POTS recipients familiarize themselves with virtual technology. “Spanish is the first language for many of the people whom we work with, so I wanted to help remove the language barrier to understanding Zoom for them,” explained Tobin.

Last year, Junior Luke Durkin organized a winter drive for POTS, filling six cardboard boxes with coats, gloves, toiletries, and other necessities. Durkin said that his favorite volunteering memory was dropping off these boxes at POTS, while Sidorsky said that hers was when Maya, a girl she had tutored for several years, learned how to write her name after weeks of practice. 

This year, Durkin, Sidorsky, and senior Safiya Patel are organizing an Amazon wishlist gift drive in an effort to, as Sidorsky explains, “provide members of POTS with a long list of items that would make their lives more comfortable during these very challenging times.” They have sold several hundred items on the wishlist already, a testament to the “outpouring of help, support, and love from the broader Riverdale community,” said Durkin. 

Please check out their wishlist at the link below: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/chpf/homepage/ref=smi_se_cl_rd_ge?orig=%2Fhz%2Fcharitylist%2Fls%2F1VO03R15XHBMJ%2Fref%3Dsmi_ext_lnk_lcl_cl%3FpldnSite%3D1.