Service clubs a force for good in the community

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of ESSO, an umbrella organization that now encompasses some 71 student-run clubs and organizations focusing on everything from food insecurity among Seacoast New Hampshire residents, to teaching chess to local school children, to fundraising to find a cure for cancer.

With broad and significant student participation — last year at least 650 Exonians were involved with ESSO programs — and a network of 45 community partners, ESSO has grown from humble beginnings into a robust and far-reaching force for good.

To get a sense of ESSO’s impact on local residents and on the Exonians who are involved with it, the Bulletin talked with a range of individuals, including program participants, program managers, club founders and student board members. What follows are snapshots of how ESSO has touched their lives, and of how the organization pushes our students to realize, in very concrete ways, the school’s historic mission.

When Lisa Warne and her husband and three daughters moved to Stratham, New Hampshire from Shelburne, Vermont, five years ago, it was to be closer to a large city (Boston) and, she adds, for the good schools. “We’ve always been academically minded,” says Warne, whose daughters entered the second, third and fifth grades, respectively, upon the family’s arrival. Shortly thereafter, two Academy students visited Stratham Memorial School, which houses grades three through five, to speak about PEA and its impact on their lives. That evening, Warne says, her third-grader, Rachel, came home and announced she was going to Phillips Exeter.

“Rachel’s zeal inspired us to check out the offerings at Exeter,” Warne explains. With 36 student-run programs that are free and open to children in the greater Exeter community, ESSO instantly appealed to the family. Warne initially enrolled her daughters in ESSO sports lessons (basketball, skating, tennis, Frisbee), later adding in a few academically focused clubs (art, robotics, computer coding) and music lessons. Noting the positive influence of these activities on Rachel, older daughter Hannah and younger daughter Kate, Warne and her husband eventually decided to register all three girls for ESSO tutoring. Their timing was perfect — for the past three years, each daughter has had the same PEA student tutor. “It’s considered math tutoring,” Warne says, “but Katie [Lee ’18], Maria [Lee ’18] and Meghana [Chalasani ’17] also talk about science and philosophy with the girls. These programs have had a tremendous impact on our family.”

While ESSO tutoring has undoubtedly sharpened the Warne sisters’ aptitude with figures, their mother says it has done much, much more. “These tutors want to be with our girls,” she emphasizes, “and beyond passing along knowledge, they are exemplary role models. They make our daughters feel like there is a buzz happening here on campus, like learning doesn’t have to be a chore. Thanks to the encouragement of Katie, Maria and Meghana, our girls know their dreams and goals are achievable. At Exeter, they’ve learned that learning is awesome.”

“Trying new clubs was a defining characteristic of my prep year,” explains Grace Gray, an effervescent rising upper from Richmond, Virginia, who, during winter term of her lower year, was selected to serve as one of eight ESSO board members. “Eventually, I found a few that really resonated for me.” One was ESSO Reading Buddies, a reading partner program held once a week at Exeter’s Lincoln Street School. Gray grew so enamored of her eager pupils and so committed to the program that she was elected a club head in the spring of her prep year, an honor usually reserved for older students.

“Another club that is really important to me is ESSO Gal Pals,” she says. “Three of my cross-country teammates ran it when I first joined as a prep. Basically, every other week, on Tuesday evenings, we meet with a group of special-needs women in the Phillips Church basement. We hang out and color, sing karaoke and have dance parties. I am especially close to one woman named Melissa, who is really amazing.”

As a new ESSO board member, Gray is serving as one of two children’s club coordinators, each of whom is responsible for working with the co-heads of 15 to 20 different children’s clubs. With her fellow board members, she is also undertaking three big-picture ESSO projects: examining how to incorporate service learning into Exeter academics; rebranding ESSO in order to attract even more Exonians to the program; and collaborating with Exeter High School’s Key Club on a number of joint community projects, such as a recent field day, held at Exeter, and a morning spent clearing brush along the Swasey Parkway.

As much as academics or running, ESSO is a defining aspect of Gray’s Exeter experience. “For me, every day that I am involved with ESSO reminds me of who I want to be as a person,” she says. “It opens up a world of connecting with others and making new friends. ESSO is a big, amazing presence that really guides me in my life. In a way, it’s given me a sense of identity.”

When he arrived at Exeter as a new lower from Overland Park, Kansas, Aivant Goyal ’17 recalls, he initially and intentionally got involved with Junior Computing Program (JCP), an ESSO club dedicated to teaching local children how to write computer code. However his deeper involvement with ESSO happened more by accident. “I had made plans to go to the mall one Saturday to see a movie with a friend,” he explains. When that friend overslept, and Goyal set out to find her, he happened to pass the Phelps Science Center. Peeking in the window, he recognized another girl he knew doing LEGO MINDSTORMS (a popular early robotics program) with local school children. “She didn’t know where our mutual friend was, the one who overslept,” Goyal says with a laugh, “but she asked me to stay and help, and I was hooked.” By the time he was an upper, he had become a co-head of both ESSO Robotics and ESSO Computer Programming, and later was selected to become the ESSO board member in charge of off-campus clubs.

Goyal, who will attend the University of California, Berkeley, starting this fall, and plans to study computer science and business, is grateful for his ESSO experiences on a number of levels. “Besides being fun,” he says, “they’ve given me another perspective on life. Now, with these experiences, when I see problems come up, I understand how to get organized and work around them. Also, and without wanting to sound cliché, ESSO has shown me how easy it is to change someone’s life and then to amplify that.”

Case in point: Through a senior project inspired jointly by his work with ESSO and by the writings of moral philosopher Peter Singer, Goyal is hoping to soon begin “implementing non sibi” beyond Exeter. With the advice and encouragement of Reyes and of Academy Trustees Mark Edwards ’78; P’12, P’14; Peter M. “Scotch” Scocimara ’82; P’16, P’18; and the Academy’s Chief Financial Officer David Hanson, he has begun early marketing of his mobile app, Project EnGive, a philanthropic platform that allows schools to compete against one another to see how many students they can get to donate to myriad local, national and global causes. “The ESSO board members recently spoke with a lot of alumni,” Goyal explains, referring to Exeter reunion gatherings to which the group was invited this spring. “A question we often got was, ‘How are you going to use ESSO going forward?’ If all goes as planned, Project EnGive is one answer to that question.”

Editor's note: This article first appeared in the summer 2017 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.