Through volunteer opportunities with links to the University Chaplaincy, Tufts students turn care for community into meaningful local action
As one component of the Hillel Community Action Partners program, Tufts volunteers like Rachel Kaplan, A28, shown above, offer homework help to Medford middle schoolers, creating a structure that balances enrichment with academic support. Photo: Sadie Goldstein, A26
Some Tufts undergraduates spend their volunteer hours mentoring young people in nearby communities. Others prepare meals, clean floors, and welcome guests at a homeless shelter. Still others help connect campus groups whose missions overlap in unexpected ways.
Taken together, those efforts offer a window into one dimension of the work of the University Chaplaincy. Across its religious and philosophical communities—and through partnerships that extend beyond them—the chaplaincy helps create opportunities for students to serve others in ways that are sustained, relationship-driven, and deeply local.
By (College) Students, for (Middle School) Students
One example can be found at Tufts Hillel, where the Hillel Community Action Partners (HCAP) program brings local middle-school students to campus each week for homework support and hands-on activities.
This student-run afterschool program began about five years ago, growing out of a local need. Nick Tucci, principal of Medford’s McGlynn Middle School, was searching for afterschool programming for students in grades six through eight. At the same time, Tufts Hillel students were looking for volunteer opportunities. Those students connected with Tucci by the university’s Government and Community Relations team, and together they designed an initiative that serves middle-schoolers from McGlynn (and also, more recently, from Medford’s Andrews Middle School).
With HCAP, all programming (as provided by students like Zach Klein, A28, shown here) is shaped in part by surveys of the middle schoolers, allowing their interests to help guide the activities. Photo: Sadie Goldstein, A26
On Tuesdays and Thursdays after school, Medford transports as many as 40 students to Hillel by bus, where they stay until 5:45 p.m. One afternoon is devoted to art and the other to STEM; the programming in both cases is shaped in part by surveys of the younger students, allowing their interests to help guide the activities. Tufts volunteers also offer homework help, creating a structure that balances enrichment with academic support. The program is available at no cost to the community.
“The program gives our students consistent attention and encouragement from skilled and compassionate role models among the Tufts students,” says Tucci, the McGlynn principal. “Beyond academic support and engaging activities, it offers positive relationships that help middle-school students grow, provides exposure to a college environment, and reinforces higher education as a goal to which they can aspire.”
On April 28, HCAP will hold its annual showcase, where the participating middle-schoolers will share with their families and the Tufts volunteers what they have made and learned over the course of the year. The showcase will make their work visible, but some of what HCAP builds is less easily displayed: a distinctive kind of familiarity and trust that grows when young people and their mentors keep returning to the same room, week after week.
Service—and Reflection—in Harvard Square
Another longstanding avenue for University Chaplaincy-connected service runs through the Catholic chaplaincy, which sends Tufts students to volunteer at the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter. The shelter, based at University Lutheran Church in Cambridge and run by Harvard students, has for the past eight years been a regular destination for Tufts volunteers.
Lynn Cooper, A02, Catholic chaplain and associate director of the University Chaplaincy, helped establish the partnership. “I was looking for a meaningful way for students to plug into service,” Cooper says. “This was the perfect fit, because it offered a chance for Tufts volunteers to return regularly and become part of a community.”
Typically, Tufts sends three to four students once a week to help with dinner service and light chores. Usually, one or two experienced volunteers anchor the shift, joined by newer participants, a structure that Cooper says allows students to enter the work gradually while also giving the shelter some continuity from week to week.
Volunteers prepare simple meals, such as grilled cheese sandwiches or tuna melts, serve dinner, clean up, and help keep the space running smoothly. Cooper notes that some Tufts students have gone well beyond the standard evening shift, taking on overnight service as well: they stay at the shelter, cover a two-hour overnight block, and help open in the morning, before returning to Tufts.
For Cooper, the value of the partnership lies not only in the discrete tasks students perform, but also in the broader perspective they gain. “When students volunteer at the shelter, they do more than just help out for an evening,” she says. “They learn from incredibly knowledgeable and dedicated peers while they’re there, and they have the opportunity to think deeply about housing insecurity and poverty in a setting grounded in human dignity and direct care.”
The mix of service and deeper reflection is part of what has made the partnership endure, Cooper adds. For students who return regularly, the shifts often take on the feel of a weekly ritual, one that pulls them outside the usual rhythms of classes, assignments, and exams. In that sense, the shelter offers a recurring reminder of “life beyond the syllabi,” as Cooper puts it, and of the larger systems and human realities that shape the surrounding community.
A Natural Point of Connection
While HCAP and the shelter partnership are formal volunteer offerings, not every volunteer opportunity follows a distinct path. Sometimes it has been less about running a program and more about helping students and organizations find one another, creating openings for service to grow across communities.
“A big part of that work [with DREAM] was encouraging kids to feel at home on campus, to imagine college as a future possibility,” says Kyle Hammond, A25, now a master’s student in urban and environmental policy and planning. Photo: Alonso Nichols
That’s what Kyle Hammond, A25, found when, as an undergraduate, he mentored children from under-resourced communities through DREAM, a national organization that partners with colleges and other institutions to provide role models for kids who need them.
Through the program, Hammond would go from football practice each week on Friday afternoons to spend time with children who came to campus, playing games, leading activities, and building relationships.
“A big part of that work was encouraging kids to feel at home on campus, to imagine college as a future possibility,” says Hammond, now a master’s student in urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts.
For Hammond, the work was personal as well as practical. “I was able to be in someone else’s life in a way that I wish someone had been in mine,” he says, describing what kept him committed to the program.
While participating in DREAM, Hammond also took part in Interfaith Ambassadors, a chaplaincy program that brings together students from different religious backgrounds to learn from one another and build community.
Because he was active in both groups, he became a natural point of connection between them. For example, during planning for Pax et Lux, an annual multifaith chaplaincy event with a strong community focus, the chaplaincy was looking for ways to draw on students’ existing community commitments. Hammond introduced the group to DREAM, sparking a collaboration that pulled other members of Interfaith Ambassadors into the mentoring program.
In Hammond’s telling, bringing greater visibility to DREAM made a difference for everyone involved. The children benefited from having more mentors and more people invested in their growth. Other students came to better understand the impact that mentoring can have, and many were moved to make time and space for that work themselves. Meanwhile, for the chaplaincy, the collaboration created another way to translate its values into concrete engagement with the surrounding community.
These examples of students motivated to make a difference during their time at Tufts are precisely that—a few examples—according to University Chaplain Elyse Nelson Winger. “Our Protestant Students Association is hosting a campus blood drive this month, in addition to their other service work,” she says. “The members of the Muslim Students Association do service and advocacy work all year long.” Further, as Nelson Winger notes, many of the student organizations do service initiatives independently of the University Chaplaincy.
“We support and promote all these efforts,” says Nelson Winger. “But they are truly driven by student passion.”
