Gates Cambridge Scholars will take part in their first large-scale Day of Service on 8 November as they join forces with various local or online service initatives.
Gates Cambridge Scholars will take part in their first large-scale Day of Service on 8 November as they join forces with various local or online service initatives.
About 80 Scholars will participate in a range of activities organised by the Gates Cambridge Scholars’ Council, from gardening and painting at the Wood Green Animal Shelter, spring cleaning at Wintercomfort for the Homeless, playing games and painting with Cambridge children (facilitated by Bounce! and Student Community Action) and assisting with the collection/classification of data for large-scale citizen science or humanities research projects, such as Planet Hunters (Astronomy) and Cell Slider (Oncology).
Scholars will be recognisable by the Gates Cambridge t-shirts they will wear as part of the Day. The Day will culminate in an “Open Gates” Dinner at the Cambridge Unitarian Church Hall to raise funds for Oxfam, ahead of the Inaugural Annual Lecture by Dame Barbara Stocking, former head of Oxfam GB, on November 11.
Catherine Gascoigne [2013], Community Officer on the Gates Cambridge Scholars Council, said: “The aim of the Day of Service is to engage respectfully with the wider Cambridge community in a manner that demonstrates Scholars’ commitment to the central mission of the Gates Cambridge Scholarship – namely, improving the lives of others.”
While Scholars have, for the last several years, engaged in smaller, one-off community engagement days, it is anticipated that the positive response to the inaugural Day of Service will make it an annual fixture on the Scholar calendar.
Activity descriptions and times are at http://bit.ly/1nm4Je2 and the sign-up for Scholars is here. The Day of Service will be tweeted at: #opengates2014.
