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A group of Hamilton students volunteered at the Rome Art and Community Center’s annual Easter Bunny Trail on April 7. The students, who dressed in costume, distributed candy and posed for pictures with local children.  

Although warm beaches beckon and fresh powdery slopes shout for attention, nearly 100 Hamilton students are spending a week of their spring break volunteering at one of 10 nonprofit organizations for Alternative Spring Break (ASB), March 12-23.

More than 100 students went out to serve the local community on Saturday, Jan. 21, for Hamilton’s 14th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Service Day. Hamilton Association for Volunteering, Outreach and Charity ( HAVOC) sent groups of students to 17 different sites to volunteer for the afternoon.

The January session of Hamilton Serves took place on Saturday, Jan. 14, with 41 students who are beginning studies on campus this week volunteering at six local non-profit organizations.

Members of the women's basketball team took a break from games and practices to volunteer at United Cerebral Palsy on Jan. 9. The students helped out in the Pre-K rooms. One teacher commented “the girls were wonderful, and would they please come back?!”

The men and women of Hamilton’s CSI team have some of the most specialized and important skills on campus. They’re not crime scene investigators, though—CSI stands for COOP Service Intern, one of the many service opportunities offered by Hamilton’s Community Opportunity and Outreach Project (COOP). Each year, a half-dozen first-year students join this selective program, which is focused on matching a student with a local non-profit agency for an extended four-semester internship.

It was an anniversary of sorts. To COOP director Amy James, 2011 marks the year that every class of Hamilton students has participated in Hamilton Serves. The Orientation program began in 2008 and takes the students to volunteer at local non-profit agencies for the morning before classes start.

Recent Hamilton graduate Leide Cabral ’11 has an impressive background in community service, and has especially contributed to the fight against educational inequality. Cabral, who graduated with a degree in mathematics, has recently begun work in Boston with the Young People’s Project (YPP), an organization that develops students from traditionally marginalized populations as learners, teachers and leaders for the future.

Nine Hamilton students spent a week of spring break volunteering with the humanitarian aid organization No More Deaths in Tucson. Students making the trip were Kerry Coughlin ’11, Ilse Zoerb ’11, Sam Doyon ’12, Connor Brown ’12, Ephraim McDowell ’12, Elizabeth Costello ’13, Grace Lee ’13, Chip Sinton ’13 and Barsha Baral ’13.

Reading is an essential skill that most experts agree is developed at a very early stage in a child’s education. Yet not all students acquire this vital skill at the same rate, and many need extra help to become fluid readers. To aid some of these students, Hamilton recently began a new community outreach program at Kernan Elementary School in Utica to help second-graders  improve their reading abilities.