We were beyond delighted to spend time with our almost-200 guests at the Lunder Arts Center at CSV 50! on Friday. If you’ve been to our annual CSV Now! event in the past, you know this fundraising event stood out. We danced, we reveled, we laughed. Why? Because we tapped into the joy of our students and volunteers—fifty years’ worth! For Cambridge Public School students who benefit from one of 
our volunteer programs, that emotion is often the quiet and subtle joy of reaching understanding in an academic subject—understanding that had hitherto seemed impossible. For volunteers, it’s the quiet and personal joy that comes with actively sharing knowledge, time, or human kindness without expecting a return.
Well, this time we whooped it up. This was our Happy Dance, and couldn’t have been done without you.
CSV 50! was our leap three feet into the air, as if we were a first-generation college-bound kid reading an acceptance letter to an institution we didn’t think would have us. This was our unbridled Aha! moment, as if we were an eighth-grader who finally unlocks algebra and realizes it’s not going to be hard anymore—just interesting.
It was the moment we’ve been waiting for,just as when a bevy of first-graders bursts into smiles when their Reading Buddies have arrived at the door of their classroom.
Thank you for celebrating with us.
If you didn’t make it to the Lunder Arts Center in person, take a look at some of the goings-on in our scrapbook. We are grateful to our event sponsors for their support of CSV.
If you’re new to Cambridge School Volunteers and what we do, we’re glad you’ve found us! For regular updates, you can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Have a look at a day in the life of CSV, here, to understand our scope and human impact. You can also sign up for our newsletter by emailing us here.
If you’d like to understand more about practical ways to support CSV, here on our site you can learn about donating, volunteering, or becoming a corporate partner.
So many businesses and institutions in the Cambridge community contributed to our fiftieth birthday event in one way or another. We’ll be reaching out to you by mail individually, but let’s just say here that we couldn’t have done it without you!
The CSV staff was back at work on Monday. We are making new matches of students to tutors or mentors, fielding CORI forms from newly registered volunteers, and preparing for Wednesday’s training workshop for early literacy volunteers. Stay tuned for details about our spring training workshops and our volunteer recognition event.
For the 6,000+ students in the Cambridge Public Schools, your support of CSV, in whatever form it may be, spells differentiated instruction, targeting the needs of all learners, and getting our community’s kids what they need to succeed in school.
Thanks for stepping into the Lunder Center on Friday as our guest, and stepping out as our friend.
At CSV 50!, we debuted our video about CSV—”At the heart of the Community.” (That’s IMP tutor Sam Lasser on screen in the photo below, at the event. Sam was there in person, too.)
We know the sound was not perfect over the hum of 200 guests. Will you please watch it again, at your leisure, and share it with friends who might like to get involved? Please share on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks, too, to help us get the word out. The link is here: https://youtu.be/3N4ULo_4N-w.
On behalf of our board and staff, with appreciation,
Jen Fries,
Executive Director