Service Day at the Meridian School

The Meridian School (housed in the Good Shepherd Center) will be teaching their kids about giving back to the community this coming Thursday. From a press release we just received:

Community service has always been an essential part of life at the Meridian School, an independent K-5 in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood.

But the focus of this year’s Community Service Day will be on the diverse community within the school’s own historic brick walls.

On Thursday, October 8, the school’s 184 students will fan out across the sprawling Good Shepherd Center, the century-old building where the school is housed, to lend a hand to a variety of neighboring non-profit organizations.

More than 20 non-profits, from the organic gardening group Seattle Tilth to the French language and cultural center Alliance Francaise, call the Good Shepherd Center home.

“Service is the rent you pay for living on earth, and it starts in elementary school,” according to Ron Waldman, the Head of Meridian School. “By the time they leave 5th grade, we want our kids to feel that this is part of the fabric of who they are. It’s not whether I should or shouldn’t serve the community, but how. That’s just what we do.”

The release goes on to list all the different projects the kids will be undertaking, from weeding the grounds to helping prepare handmade sheeps’ wool ornaments to raise money for the endangered Snow Leopard (the animal, presumably, not the OS, which is not endangered), learn about assistive technologies, trim hedges, and pick fruit (a press will be on hand to turn the harvest into cider).

The fact that the school is able to assist charitable organizations that live under the same roof is one of the beauties of the Good Shepherd Center:

The Good Shepherd Center is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was granted landmark status by the City of Seattle in 1984. Built in 1906, it originally housed a home for wayward girls run by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd. In the 1970’s, members of the Wallingford Community led the charge to save the building from being turned into a shopping mall. The center was purchased by the City of Seattle, and then turned over to the non-profit group Historic Seattle, which maintains it as a multi-purpose community center.

“There’s a great energy that happens here,” according to Mark Willson, who manages the building for Historic Seattle. “It’s a combination of all the organizations, and also the building itself. It’s warm and rich with history.”

For more information about Meridian School’s Community Service Day, please contact Ted Holmes, Admissions and Marketing Director, at 206-632-7154, or [email protected].