Mentorship Projects
One of Ethics Forum's main values is community so our mentorship projects are incredibly important to us. We've worked with students from elementary schools, high schools, and even some colleges. Our most notable mentorship project is the annual one-day event, Operation Pumpkin, at the Mont Vernon Village School. However, our group is always innovating and looking for new opportunities to make connections within our ever-expanding community.
Operation Pumpkin
Operation Pumpkin is a day-long event at the Mont Vernon Village School (MVVS) that the Ethics Forum hosts that has been happening for years. Around every Halloween, the Ethics members visit the Mont Vernon children with painted pumpkins as decorations and put on a mini-musical! The musical is a skit and dance based on a children's story with a different theme to the event every year. For the rest of the day, the Ethics members work with students in the classroom and play with them at recess. The main goal of this event is to create bonds between Souhegan seniors and elementary students, but it's also a fun way to share important lessons with the kids.
In October of 2021, while still being mindful of COVID-19 regulations by wearing masks and staying distanced from the kids to a degree, the Ethics Forum was able to get back into Operation Pumpkin and put on the show in full swing! In 2021/2022 seniors put on their own rendition of Hotel Transylvania -- a classic kids movie starring characters such as Dracula, Mavis, Johnny, and other Halloween monsters. The theme of our show this year was kindness and inclusivity as we walked the kids through the moral of how monsters and humans can all work to get along together.
Other Mentorship Projects
Currently, we are laying the foundations for a partnership between Ethics Forum and a new leadership group at Amherst's Middle School, inclusive of both Amherst students and Mont Vernon students in grades seven and eight. The goal is to try to promote student leadership from a young age and instill empowerment for creating real, lasting change in peoples' environments. With this lesson being instilled in young people, they are taught about the value in themselves and their own voices and it empowers them to continue to strive for change as they grow older.
