GDAY Programs
- Community Service Initiative
- Rachel's Challenge
- Parent to Parent Network
- GD Outdoor Family Network
- Safe Homes Program
- Half Day Initiative
- Everyone's Middle School (was Middle School Advisory)
- Community Reading Day
Community Service Initiative - a student led initiative
The Community Service Initiative agrees that many students have trouble finding community service opportunities. The GDAY Community Service Initiative thinks that if a list of community service opportunities is made accessible to students, they will participate in more community services. This student-run committee's goal is to help find community service opportunities for students. We are looking for organizations that could use student volunteers to perform community services for them. We will take the organizations' contact information and create a student accessible list of service opportunities. Students will then be able to use this list to find the community services that they are most interested in participating. Students who perform community service can feel good about the positive impact they have on the community. If you are interested in adding your organization's information to the community service opportunities list, please contact the GDAY Community Service Initiative.
Half Day Initiative
Groton Dunstable Alliance for Youth (GDAY) began the half day initiative to address the large number of children and teens who are traveling to the town center on half days or involved in other unsupervised activities. The number of students in the center of town on any given half day had become large. GDAY formed this initiative partnering with the schools, community leaders, police and parents to look at strategies to respond to this issue. This included public safety interventions and alternative supervised activities for the children.
Some of the areas the GDAY initiative looked at were communicating with parents on the reality of unsupervised young people on half days and alternatives to going down town or going to an empty house. It is GDAY's hope that by looking at these issues now, we can be proactive and create opportunities for our young citizens to socialize in a safe, supervised environment.
Some of the great programs that GDAY has helped sponsor are:
Community Reading Day
This program, developed in conjunction with the Groton Dunstable Regional School District (GDRSD), is the longest running project from GDAY and will be held at Swallow Union, Boutwell School and Florence Roche Elementary Schools.
Community Reading Day is an event where a variety of community leaders visit classrooms to stress the importance of reading skills while fostering a continued positive relationship between visible members of the Groton-Dunstable community, elementary students and the Groton Dunstable Regional School District. The readers will have an opportunity to read pre-selected books aloud to the classes, discuss the subject matter in a dialog with the class, as well as discuss how books and reading have made an impact on their personal and professional lives.
Some of the scheduled participants for Community Reading Day include members of the police and fire departments, local business owners, school board members, members of the town, library and school administration as well as additional special guests.
Community Reading Day is possible due to the generous donation of the Groton Dunstable Education Foundation (GDEF) in purchasing the books to be read to the elementary classrooms with a subject focus of this year’s readings will be respect for others and tolerance.