Olivia DrakeNovember 15, 20124min
Several Wesleyan staff and students participated in United Way's Day of Caring on Oct. 3. Projects included storytelling and reading with children at Farm Hill School, leading arts and crafts projects, painting a mural and planting gardens. The event was hosted by the Center for Community Partnerships. Read more about the Day of Caring in this Oct. 23 Hartford Courant article. Contributed photos of the day are below:

Cynthia RockwellOctober 22, 20124min
At Wesleyan's Neighborhood Preschool on Lawn Avenue, a 23-year-old wooden playscape with safety issues needed to come down. Mark Woodworth ’94, father of current NPS student Dylan, and head coach of Wesleyan's baseball team, signed up to help. On Oct. 5, Woodworth and his team set aside the baseball bat and took swings with sledge hammers and mallets, wielding tools, and lifting timbers between their Friday morning classes. During playtime, the NPS students looked on in amazement, repeating to each other what their teacher, Karyn Hurlbert reminded them, "Stay out of the sandbox"—where the baseball team was dismantling their old climber. The…

Olivia DrakeAugust 24, 20112min
More than 75 Wesleyan employees, contractors, friends and families participated in the Wesleyan Open Golf Tournament, held July 9 at Banner Country Club in Moodus, Conn. Golfers raised $1,500 for Middletown United Fathers, Inc. MUF is a non-profit organization that operates as an advocate for underprivileged and underserved men and youth of color throughout Middlesex Country. Areas of advocacy are centered on issue regarding education, health, finances, personal, family and community responsibility. Future programming will include ongoing fatherhood parenting classes as well as job placement services for youth and fathers participating in services through the organization. All participants pay an entry…

Eric GershonJune 22, 20112min
Lots of people like watching birds. Understandably, birds don’t always like people watching them. For the Audubon Center at Bent of the River, a 700-acre nature preserve in Southbury, Conn., this presented a problem: the swallows and kingfishers along a popular trail were perpetually startled by human visitors. Assistant Professor of Art Elijah Huge and the 11 students in his Architecture II class devised a solution – a chic bird blind they designed and built from scratch. The structure represents the third major design-build project for North Studio, a faculty-student design collaborative Huge founded in 2006 that is cultivating a…

Olivia DrakeMarch 23, 20113min
Film studies major Zachary Valenti '12 understands how cancer can devastate a family. The disease claimed two grandparents – his father's mother and mother's father – as well as a stepfather. As an adolescent, Valenti was already aware of the risks of male breast cancer. He suffered from gynocomastia, the abnormal development of breast tissue in men. For the past three months, Valenti has combined his life experiences and film studies skills for a project that raises breast cancer awareness in the local community. Valenti is creating a documentary featuring eight female breast cancer survivors for the Middlesex Hospital Comprehensive Breast…

Olivia DrakeDecember 2, 20102min
In the remote village of Gitwe, Rwanda, 6-year-old children ascend mountains, or make the journey by foot along dusty roads – more than 3.5 miles each way – to fetch water for their families. They fill plastic motor oil jugs or any other container they can find. Barefoot and often in intense heat, they lug the 40-pound containers of water back home. “The bins that the children carry are just as big as they are,” says Carina Kurban ’14, who witnessed the daily procession of thirsty children during a fact-finding missionary trip in August 2010. “And many of the children…