Student organizers Raquel Belkin and Tori Scheetz helped make this year’s Red Cross Blood Drive a success.

What makes Harvey so special, beyond the many academic successes of our student scholars, beyond the victories of our student-athletes in sports and the stellar performances of our students in the performing arts,  are the extraordinary efforts of so many who choose to serve those in need. Harvey does indeed care.

Our students in the Community Service Club each year gather and deliver packages for soldiers overseas, collect food for distribution to the Katonah Men’s Shelter, organize and lead Harvey’s contingent of walkers for Making Strides against Breast Cancer, and hold bake sales and conduct other fund-raising activities to respond to the need caused by natural disasters when they occur.  Harvey Cares means our students initiate the idea of hosting a winter carnival to provide local families a chance for family fun in a winter outing while raising money for charity at the same time.

But Harvey Cares goes beyond the Community Service Club. The Sophomore Class Project involves the tenth graders spending two days assisting Habitat for Humanity and the senior class each holiday season collecting and delivering toys for tots. And, when a particular crisis occurs, as it did in the 2010-11 school year, students in a class will answer the call as the members of the Japanese class did in making 1,000 cranes to help raise funds for the victims of the tsunami that devastated Japan.

And when our Spanish students planned a summer trip to Peru last June, it was not solely planned as an adventure of touring ancient ruins, hiking through the terrain, rafting down a raging river. It involved spending four days living with families in a small Peruvian town to teach the children English and help clean and repair their school.

Winston Churchill said: “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”  At Harvey, where service to the community is as vital a part of our character as our successes in the classrooms, the  ball fields, and in the black box theater, our student responses to those in need  tell us much about the outstanding quality of the young people in our school.