Nightingale Community Service Program Receives National Award

Nightingale’s Civic Engagement and Social Leadership class, developed and led by Director of Community Service Kristen Mulvoy, was recently awarded second place in a nationwide competition sponsored by The Center for Spiritual and Ethical Education (CSEE). Each year, the century-old nonprofit dedicated to ethical leadership honors two institutions that best exemplify a specific quality related to community outreach. This year, the organization looked for schools that built outstanding relationships with community organizations and recognized Nightingale students for their ongoing work with students at the Sisulu-Walker Charter School in East Harlem.

Ms. Mulvoy established the Civic Engagement and Social Leadership class in the summer of 2011 to further strengthen the Upper School community service program by adding a curricular component. In its inaugural semester, Class IX students spent each Friday morning with fourth- and fifth-graders at Sisulu-Walker working on math skills, a Harlem history assignment, and even an advocacy project for a local food pantry. The girls’ outreach work at Sisulu was supplemented with classroom study, where they reflected upon their experiences and discussed concepts such as civic engagement, philanthropy, and social entrepreneurship. After four months of immersive learning, Ms. Mulvoy gushed that she “couldn’t be more pleased with the result. [The girls were] engaged, enthusiastic, and actively thinking of ways they can help the school and the students there, in a way that is beneficial both to them and the recipients of the service.”

In their monthly newsletter entitled Connections, CSEE aptly describes Ms. Mulvoy’s class as a program that “create[s] a meaningful relationship between the older Nightingale and younger Sisulu students.” The organization recognizes the girls not only for the bonds they have built through tutoring and collaborative projects, but also for “being role models for younger students, and learn[ing] more about a neighborhood only a few blocks away but rich in a tradition that most of them are insufficiently familiar with.”

Congratulations to Ms. Mulvoy and her Class IX service learning students—the girls’ dedication and commitment to Sisulu is evidenced by this award and by the ever-strengthening partnership that has developed.

To read more about Nightingale’s community service award, click here to download CSEE’s May newsletter.