Team 123 is ready ... are YOU! MBA Parking is here! Reserve your garage spot for all home games and support the Service Club at the same time. $25 for all 6 games, saving $5 off the price of paying at individual games. You will be guaranteed a garage spot if you arrive between 5:30 pm and 10 minutes before game starting time. Click here to purchase your pass. Email serviceclub@montgomerybell.edu with questions.
Best Buddies met weekly by Zoom, gathering with friends and catching up on the week. Boys planned individual and small group outings and spent quality time together on their own.
Junior School students started the second semester sorting cold weather gear items, bagging them up and sending them to Nashvillians in need. Blanket Nashville, Oasis Center and UniCycle all received new and gently used items generously donated by the MBA community.
Under the leadership of seniors Jason Zhu, Mauro Mastrapasqua, William Rogers and others, MBA pulled off a hugely successful Cellophony in early March. The student concert raised $5000 for the W.O. Smith Music School! The talent of our students matched with the technology of the new event center made for a magical evening.
Super Bowl Sunday ended with our Just.Glass post-festivities glass recycling efforts. This annual event serves as a reminder of MBA’s special partnership with Justice Industries. Recycle, reduce poverty and support the MBA Service Club at the same time by signing up for home glass recycling pick up. To learn more, visit our Just.Glass webpage at montgomerybell.edu/justglass
Thanks to snow, our annual LifeSavers Organ and Tissue Donation Awareness Week was moved from February to beautiful days in March. A special video at Assembly and an information tent and toys in the quad brought education and fun to the MBA campus. Listen to important words from our students, faculty and alumni to learn how you too can #BetheGiftMBA at https://youtu.be/XvElfF4cZhQ
While Loaves & Fishes kept the building closed to volunteers until May, MBA worked to continue feeding our hungry neighbors. Thanks to Eastwood Deli Co, we were able to provide catered meals every month, which we supplemented with seasonally appropriate goodie bags. In May, boys finally were able to help prepare and serve to-go boxes and socialize with our guests. The Service Club also helped our Loaves & Fishes partners at a special event where they handed out food, home items and other necessities to Nashvillians who continue to suffer in the aftermath of storms, Covid and other difficulties.
With a lot of help from our friends at Big Al’s Catering, the MBA Service Club was able to put on a great Valentine’s brunch for the ladies at Mending Hearts. Decorations, goodie bags, a biscuit bar, huge sweet rolls, eggs, bacon and much more greeted our guests as they arrived for fun, fellowship and amazing food. We also were able to fit in a work day on the Mending Hearts campus with extra hands provided by Coach Pippin, Coach Redmond and the MBA Track and Field Team.
Due to COVID, Montgomery Bell Miracle went virtual, but the changes did not hamper the spirit of the group or the donors to the Children’s Miracle Network. Partnering with 11 other schools, the MBA Service Club helped raise over $335,000 #forthekids!
Dr. Bailey and his crew of history buffs spent several Saturdays working to preserve historic sites around Nashville. Fort Negley, Glen Leven, Shy’s Hill and more benefited from the expertise, commitment and hard work of MBA students and faculty.
While we are anxious to get our community tutoring program back on track for in-person learning, Saturday Scholars continued to do their thing throughout the second semester. Each week MBA students worked one-on-one with students from different schools around Nashville using Zoom, Google Meet, and FaceTime. We hope to continue virtual learning as needed in the Fall even as we return to in-person programming.
Our partnership with Second Harvest continued into the Spring semester with groups heading to the warehouse to sort food to be distributed throughout the community.
We are grateful to have been able to continue our work with Urban Housing Solutions by delivering another amazing meal through their Last Saturday Dinners program. With a little extra help from Senor Paolicchi and Dr. Marro, the boys prepared a sophisticated and delicious variety of dishes for our friends at Mercury Court.
In addition to our usual partnerships, thanks to the leadership of Frank Pierce (MBA ‘24), the Service Club put together over 150 snack bags for our neighbors served by Room in the Inn. Using money raised by Frank and with special help from the MBA Mother’s Club, we purchased protein snacks, granola bars, fruit cups and much more. We then gathered in the MBA Student Center, formed an assembly line and got to work. Once that work was done, we loaded the pick-up truck and delivered the bags. Rising MBA Senior, Travis Swafford, who is interning at Room in the Inn this summer, had the privilege of gifting a bag he helped prepare as he served our neighbors in need.
The MBA Service Fellowship was founded in 2020 with the intention of giving dedicated MBA Service Club members the opportunity to explore more deeply the work they do, and fellowship candidates, Jack Kim and Ian Durelli (MBA ‘22) continued to advance their research throughout the second semester. These boys are taking work they have done in the community to another level by engaging in a study of some aspect of that work and ultimately producing a final project that expresses what they have learned. Jack’s project is based in his partnership with Mending Hearts and focuses on addiction and addiction services. Ian is building on his partnership with Best Buddies to investigate services available to those with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Both boys are doing amazing work! To learn more about the fellowship or Jack’s and Ian’s projects, visit the fellowship webpage at https://www.montgomerybell.edu/programs/overview-of-student-life/service-club/mba-service-fellowship.
Thanks to the generosity of an MBA donor, the MBA Service Club has placed interns in five different non-profit organizations this summer as part of our Sophomore Summer Service Leadership Internship Program. These gentlemen will spend approximately six weeks working with their assigned organization, gaining skills and insight into the operation and leadership of a non-profit and learning more about our neighbors served by the organization. The students will receive a stipend and the organization will also receive a small monetary gift. The 2021 interns are as follows:
Connor Carr - Operation Stand Down
Will Elrod - Preston Taylor Ministries
Travis Swafford - Room in the Inn (leftover from 2020)
Harrison Zoller - Urban Housing Solutions
Henry Lee - W.O. Smith Music School
MBA is proud of the work our students do to better themselves and our community. With a little luck, we hope to return to our full schedule of opportunities, including international service trips, during the 2021-22 school year. To learn more about all of our partnerships and to keep track of what is going on with our service programming, visit us at https://www.montgomerybell.edu/programs/overview-of-student-life/service-club.
