|  | Community Service at Porter's Porter’s recognizes that instilling a lifelong commitment to community service in our students is an integral part of preparing them for college, for leadership, and for life. All New Girl freshmen and sophomores are required to complete 20 hours of community service during their years at Porter’s, and all New Girl juniors and seniors must complete 10 hours of service.
Concordia is Porter's community service club, and the student heads of Concordia work closely with the Community Service Coordinator to provide ample opportunities in which students may participate throughout the year. These include peer tutoring, fundraising events, volunteering for Relay for Life, Foodshare, the Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, local shelters and soup kitchens, nursing homes, elementary schools, parks, museums, and the town of Farmington. Students are also encouraged to spend time giving back to their own communities during school breaks. For artistically inclined students, Porter’s Arts Department offers several annual opportunities for service, and various clubs often organize fundraising events for particular charities or organizations.
Concordia All-Stars awards are presented at the end of each year and honor those seniors who, having experienced firsthand the joy and sense of purpose that comes from serving others, have completed over 100 hours of service.
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| Community Service and the Arts Porter's art teachers take classroom work that is academic in nature and move it beyond the classroom into the community by initiating art service opportunities. Art service opportunities include Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, December Bowl-a-thon, the Annual Art Sale, the Ted Hershey Dance and Music Marathon, Music Performance fundraisers, and Connecticut Children's Medical Center projects. These charitable projects inspire the Porter’s community to engage in the world, champion a cause and show compassion.
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Annual Art SaleThe Annual Art Sale is a joint effort of arts students and others in the school community. Students and adults alike make a wide range of art and craft items to sell as a fundraiser for various charitable causes that have been nominated and chosen by the entire school.
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| Connecticut Children's Medical Center Connecticut Children's Medical Center has been a focus of many charitable projects at Porter’s in recent years. Our work with CCMC began with a school-wide effort to make tiles to build murals for three chemo-treatment rooms as a thank you for the care given to a Porter's student in 2000. Other projects for CCMC included raising money to help design and furnish their Teen Room, painting numerous large and lively frames to hold patient artwork, and the completion of "Main Street." ”Main Street” is a series of 30 paintings of individual storefronts that line both sides of a main corridor. This project was completed to honor and support a Porter's student who received her treatment for leukemia while completing her senior year. The paintings were created by students in Art 1, 2 and 3 as part of their classes.
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| December Bowl-a-thon Pottery students and other members of the Porter's community create bowls that are sold to raise money for Foodshare, an organization that supplies food to pantries and kitchens throughout the Hartford area. At our annual December Bowl-a-thon, the bowls are symbolically filled for someone in need.
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| Music Performance Fundraisers The Farmington Valley Symphony Orchestra, founded and conducted by Porter's music teacher John Eells, collaborates each year with Channel 3 in producing its Joy for the Kids concert at Hartford Stage. In 2006, the Porter's Advanced Performance Ensemble was invited to join the concert for the first time, and has joined each year since.
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Ted Hershey Dance and Music MarathonPorter’s Dance Workshop performs at various dance events in the Farmington community, and performs annually at the Ted Hershey Dance and Music Marathon, which celebrates the life of a Hartford artist and his mission to raise awareness for arts education, acceptance, diversity and AIDS research and awareness.
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| Hole in the Wall Gang Camp Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, a camp founded by Paul Newman for children with life-threatening illnesses, also is a favorite organization of Porter's artists. Groups have traveled to the camp in Ashford, Conn., to paint everything from carnival signs to faux fish pond floors, helping the camp prepare for its annual summer season.
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