When Vassar alums are called upon to find ways to make the world a better place, they always respond. The week between Earth Day and Founder’s Day was chosen as a time for alums to take part in conservation-related activities, and Vassar clubs in more than a dozen communities—from London to San Francisco—joined in the second annual Vassar Serves initiative.
Deb Macfarlan Enright ’82 conceived of the first annual Vassar Serves event last year—the theme was food insecurity. This year’s effort was spearheaded by Andrew Solum ’89, President of the Vassar Club of the United Kingdom. Solum and more than a dozen other club members spent several hours on April 22 in a conservation area in London called Parkland Walk. “We removed invasive saplings that are crowding out native plants, and chopped and processed fallen wood,” Solum said. “Some put their building skills to good use by building a Stag Beetle loggery, a habitat to foster the UK’s largest insect, which is in decline.”
On the same afternoon, members of the Vassar Club of Atlanta partnered with Trees Atlanta, a nonprofit community group that protects and improves the community’s urban forest to remove invasive vines that were hampering the growth of trees and other vegetation.
A couple thousand miles to the west, members of the Vassar Club of San Francisco—volunteers from classes ranging from the early 1970s to 2021—joined forces with Surfrider, a local conservation group that specializes in keeping the Bay Area’s beaches clean. They spent several hours collecting trash from the beach and celebrated with a picnic in Golden Gate Park.
Other alums who live in parts of the country too remote to have a viable Vassar Club chose to take part by helping their own local conservation groups with Earth Day events.
Solum said he was pleased but not surprised by the turnout of Vassar alums. “The Vassar Serves initiative is a terrific way for Vassar communities around the globe to engage and to give back through service not just locally, but globally, and for the benefit of the planet,” he said. —Larry Hertz