With a focus on service and teamwork, a specific club on campus is helping students make a positive impact throughout Livermore. The Better Livermore Club was started by Granada student, Ridge Routt (11), to encourage student participation in the community.
“I was inspired to start the Better Livermore club because I noticed that there weren’t a lot of volunteer opportunities available for students. The school occasionally would send out emails but there were always limited spots available, so I decided to create a club to connect students with volunteer opportunities and later it evolved into creating volunteer opportunities specifically for students” said Routt.
Last year, they started by participating in events at Sycamore Grove and over the summer they reached out to the Livermore Heritage Guild. One Saturday a month, the club goes to Hagemann Ranch, owned by Livermore Heritage Guild, to help out with whatever they need at the ranch.
In addition to their work off campus, they also work wonders on Granada’s campus as well. Routt reached out to Mrs. Vu and Mr. Conover about helping work on Granada’s worn down garden for the Culinary classes to use.
“We pulled all the weeds out, we laid down cardboard and mulch so that no new weeds will grow there. We are now currently working on digging and building the foundation for a greenhouse project in that area.”
The garden project has been their most successful and impactful project yet with about 20 students total, after receiving assistance from some of the football team.
In order to decide what organizations to reach out to and volunteer for, Routt considers which will provide the most opportunities for students to volunteer and that will help as many people as possible. He has learned that he needs to be hands on in order to get people to want to participate.
“When I first started the club, I was just promoting volunteer opportunities around Livermore, I wasn’t actually participating in them. But, it was a couple months that I realized I needed to actually get my feet on the ground, so I started going out to different events and I would bring my friends and other members and we would just work because the best way to get people to follow you is to do things with them.”
He believed that a large benefit of this club, besides the community service hours, is that the experience humbles people and provides them with people skills. He describes a time where a very important local participated in helping the community with the club.
“One time the Mayor of Livermore, Mayor Marchand, helped us paint fences at Hageman Ranch,” described Routt.
And although the club has gained some popularity, There has definitely been hard spots in the attendance, especially toward the beginning. Even though as many people as possible are invited to volunteer, Routt accepts that people have busy schedules and limited availability. During the time when the club was still fairly new, they had low turnouts, the lowest being two people, but now, on average, there are usually six or more people per volunteer opportunity with hopefully more to come.
His plans for the future of the club is mainly directed toward getting more people to volunteer and getting more places for people to volunteer at. Since a majority of the volunteer work they do is hands on in gardens or at ranches, he hopes to get in contact with places like the Livermore Library for people who do no want to do physical labor outdoors.
“I do hope that the club continues after I graduate, I hope becomes something that people are interested in taking up and continuing and I hope it does have a legacy at Granada besides the work that I’ve done. It has evolved my leadership abilities. I went from not being much of a leader to having to lead this group of people.”
If anyone is interested in getting involved in the community and participating in community service, the Better Livermore Club meets in Room 303 on every other Monday.
