Call To Action Day

Potrero Nuevo Farm

 

     Notre Dame de Namur University is based on Hallmarks that focus on service learning. Call To Action Day is a day to provide service to others and give as much help to those proving that service as much as possible. Half of NDNU’s Lacrosse team and the Sustainable Development class met up at the school’s quad early in the morning and headed to Potrero Nuevo Farm, run by Jay and Suzie Trexler. There, they showed us around the farm and what kind of activities they normally liked to run for either visitors or volunteers. Since it is fall and the majority of their pumpkins were fully grown, they took us to the pumpkin garden and handed out gloves, stem cutters, and plastic bins to collect the smaller sized pumpkins or squash and to cut the larger ones. We collected a total of nearly 100 pumpkins and carried them out to the van, where Jay and Suzie drove them to the main building and had us separate and organize them by species as a group. Everything that Jay and Suzie do on the farm supports after-school arts education, gardening programs linked to schools, and sustainable agriculture for families with lower economic standings within the community. Having participated in this event on Potrero Nuevo Farm reminded me that even the smallest effort from a group of people willing to help the community can make the greatest difference in both an outstretched hand and in time spent on work that can easily be completed in at least half the time it would have taken without them. I come from a small, close-knit community that is built upon many generations of interactive community members that help need based families by creating events and sales in order to bring them a sense of security and a better livelihood. Since the bay area is so large, I did not expect there to be many organizations that helped the community at little to no costs and give me the opportunity to develop a new meaning for the community with organizations outside of my own hometown.