A Wood Pile That's Not For US
Last Saturday, September 26th, a warm and striking fall day in Vermont, seven Burr and Burton students joined Mountain Campus Director Andy Dahlstrom in Peru for a firewood stacking community service event. With three people stacking and five loading and shuttling wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of 12-inch cordwood to the barn, the entire crew was working hard to help a community member get ready for winter.
This event was one in a series of firewood-related community service projects that the Mountain Campus students have taken on in the last couple of years. In collaboration with the community organization Just Neighbors, Burr and Burton’s mountain campus has become a hub for firewood donations, processing, and at times delivery and stacking for local community members.
Dahlstrom was quick to deflect credit for the firewood initiative to former Mountain Campus student Ben James, “I give Ben credit for being the person who participated in it and framed it for us in a way that let us take it on in a more permanent way.” Dahlstrom is speaking of James’ Change Agency project, the capstone project of the Mountain Campus semester that asks students to identify a local problem and implement a solution to that problem. James, who spent many Mountain Campus hours on the wood crew, which saws and splits wood for the classroom heat source, saw that local community members could use help acquiring cord wood for the long Vermont winters. His solution was to join forces with Just Neighbors to harness student energy to process and help distribute wood donations to neighbors in need. Since James has moved on from his Mountain Campus semester, Dahlstrom and the Mountain Campus faculty and students have strengthened the connection with Just Neighbors and provided consistent cord wood for community members.
It’s clear that this student-led initiative gets to the heart of the service aspect of Burr and Burton’s mission. Dahlstrom relays that students jumped at the opportunity to work together to help a community member in a meaningful and tangible way--and had a great time doing it. Junior Piper Chapman shared, “It was so much fun! The past few days I’ve been sore because I haven't done anything like that in a few months. I want to work [on these projects] because the Mountain Campus is one of my favorite places on earth.” Dahlstrom too, is excited about the way the program has developed: “It’s a wood pile that’s not for us; when I arrived, we were serving ourselves in a sustainable, thoughtful way, and now we’re doing that, and we’ve added an important service piece.”
Invigorated from a morning of hard physical work and helping others, Saturday's volunteers parted on a high note, prodding Dahlstrom as to when the next service event would be. As students descended the stairs of the bus that had brought them up the mountain, James turned to his former teacher and said, “Let me know if there’s anything else I can help out with.” ⭑
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This event was one in a series of firewood-related community service projects that the Mountain Campus students have taken on in the last couple of years. In collaboration with the community organization Just Neighbors, Burr and Burton’s mountain campus has become a hub for firewood donations, processing, and at times delivery and stacking for local community members.
Dahlstrom was quick to deflect credit for the firewood initiative to former Mountain Campus student Ben James, “I give Ben credit for being the person who participated in it and framed it for us in a way that let us take it on in a more permanent way.” Dahlstrom is speaking of James’ Change Agency project, the capstone project of the Mountain Campus semester that asks students to identify a local problem and implement a solution to that problem. James, who spent many Mountain Campus hours on the wood crew, which saws and splits wood for the classroom heat source, saw that local community members could use help acquiring cord wood for the long Vermont winters. His solution was to join forces with Just Neighbors to harness student energy to process and help distribute wood donations to neighbors in need. Since James has moved on from his Mountain Campus semester, Dahlstrom and the Mountain Campus faculty and students have strengthened the connection with Just Neighbors and provided consistent cord wood for community members.
It’s clear that this student-led initiative gets to the heart of the service aspect of Burr and Burton’s mission. Dahlstrom relays that students jumped at the opportunity to work together to help a community member in a meaningful and tangible way--and had a great time doing it. Junior Piper Chapman shared, “It was so much fun! The past few days I’ve been sore because I haven't done anything like that in a few months. I want to work [on these projects] because the Mountain Campus is one of my favorite places on earth.” Dahlstrom too, is excited about the way the program has developed: “It’s a wood pile that’s not for us; when I arrived, we were serving ourselves in a sustainable, thoughtful way, and now we’re doing that, and we’ve added an important service piece.”
Invigorated from a morning of hard physical work and helping others, Saturday's volunteers parted on a high note, prodding Dahlstrom as to when the next service event would be. As students descended the stairs of the bus that had brought them up the mountain, James turned to his former teacher and said, “Let me know if there’s anything else I can help out with.” ⭑
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Phone: 802.362.1775, Fax: 802.362.0574
