House Service Project Kickoff: O’Donnell is up for the TASK

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Tim Delaney

CHAMINADE HALL–Every year, the 5 houses at Chaminade choose a specific charitable organization, and then each house encourages students to complete their service hours with their chosen organization.  In addition to providing service, Chaminade students donate money to their organizations through mission collections.  It is a big deal for the Chaminade community, because it leaves a permanent mark and shows what we are all about.

“I like how Chaminade runs their service hour programs,” said Pat Clohisy, a Senior from O’Donnell House. “They make it easy to get done most hours through one place, and usually it’s pretty fun to do.”

The service partnerships were announced last week at the annual Service Project Kickoff, and the O’Donnell House was thrilled to find out that they would once again be partnered with TASK. TASK specializes in providing sports and exercise for people with special needs.  “The mission of Team Activities for Special Kids, or TASK, is to enrich the lives of kids with special needs by providing athletic and social opportunities,” says the TASK website. “We’re proud to say we’ve never turned away a child because of a disability – we’ve always been able to adapt the sport to meet the athlete’s needs. At TASK we believe every individual should have a positive self-esteem.  We strive in all our programs to build this self-esteem by build our participants’ self-confidence though achieve success.”

As important as exercise can be for the kids, there are many opportunities to show their creativity inside the building and on their stage.  TASK makes sure the kids get to participate in other activities outside of sports. They have arts and crafts, plays on stage, and even parties for the holidays. TASK gives them the opportunity so they get to interact in front of an audience, show their talent, and be a part of something they would likely miss out on at home.

In the House Meetings last week, the Seniors made sure to relay all of this information to the younger students. They told stories of their past experiences and why TASK is the perfect place for a service project. “When I went there freshman year, we played baseball and soccer,” said Sam Sciortino, another O’Donnell senior, “I made sure the kid who I was partnered with was having a blast.” When the Seniors were done presenting, they handed out information for their mentor group members to fill out and made a point out of getting their hours done as early as possible.

Some of the options range from retirement homes, homeless shelters, TASK, and much more. They like to switch it up every few years, but some of the houses recently didn’t change their organization. Some stayed the same because of the high success rate of their service, and the enjoyment that the students were able to get from it.