Members of the Residential Campus work hard: the RC students work for their future, and the RAs work for a better life for RC students. But there is another hidden member that work for everyone that resides in the Residential Campus: the sanitary workers. They wake up earlier than anyone in the Campus and start the day. And they are the ones who clean up the tremendous piles of garbage and leftover food that can be seen at the end of the day. With the help of RA Chaeyoon Kim, Allen House hosted a program that could be a warm present for these hidden members of our House.

[Photo 1] Handmade Juice

    On one evening, twenty students gathered in the Fellow Room with their hands full of lemons and limes. They were about to make handmade lemon(or lime)-preserved juice. The students cut the lemons and limes into small pieces and piled them neatly into jars. They added a big spoonful of sugar and put them between the pieces of fruit. Then they secured the lid of the jars with Doyley Papers and colored strings so that the juice would be extracted and preserved. For the final step, the students wrote letters to the workers and packaged them together with the juice. All of this work was fairly easy, but the outcome was wonderful. Twenty jars of juice packaged with letters were good to go.

[Photo 3] Group Photo of Allenians with their finished work

    The next day, three students who volunteered to deliver the finished work met with RA Chaeyoon Kim just before lunchtime. They found the workers who were busy cleaning out the garbage and handed over the juice. They were quite surprised and delighted. But when the students were about to leave, the workers asked them to have lunch together with them. It was the students’ turn to be surprised and happy. Together, they went to the small staff lounge that was on the first floor of the dormitory and had lunch together. The students found out that the workers always brought homemade rice and side dish makings to work and ate them here. The workers were kind and shared the food with the students. The students said that the food tasted just like the food that their parents made for them at home. After having lunch, both the students and the workers thanked each other and parted. It was a heartwarming event that let us think about Allen’s motto once again: Rise by Lifting Others. By lifting others, we do not go down, but rise together.

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