Community Service

	The commitment to serve is at the core of the UWC movement and since the beginning Community Service has played a key role in the Short Course movement. A diverse range of service activities from working with the elderly to environmental conservation has helped the Short Course students to grow and to realise the difference that they can make to their own community. Indeed the sense of civic responsibility is such that many continue such activities when they return home; joining local charities, working in disadvantaged schools, helping highlight important issues such as child abuse and visiting the elderly to name but a few. Troskunai the home of the Lithuanian Short Course has three main service areas.
	The Jewish cemetery is the foundation upon which community service has developed in Lithuania. The location of the cemetery adjacent to a site of massacre during the Second World War, coupled to the fact that the local area is now devoid of Jewish culture has made this a symbolic place for the Short Course movement. From an initial state of complete dilapidation the cemetery has been rejuvenated every year since 1994; graves have been uncovered and rebuilt, headstones erected and the dense undergrowth cleared to reveal well over one hundred graves, which each year are individually tended to by the Short Course students.
	The local service within the Lithuanian Short Course is probably the least developed of the three service areas with much potential for future Short Courses. It succeeds in establishing contact with the local community and leads to a wide range of activities from working with school children to tending crops, stacking wood for the winter and beekeeping. The closeness to the local community is a key factor in highlighting the reality of daily life for the people of rural Lithuania, and represents a stark contrast to many of the students' lives. "When I came to Troskunai, I was actually pretty scared of the community service because I hadn't done anything of the sort before. But doing some good for the community that has welcomed you so warmly with people you really began to love - it's one of the most rewarding things there are." (Mari Riistop, Estonia, SC Lithuania 2000)
	Hospital service is the most socially demanding of the service programs. The conditions in the local hospital, which are completely inadequate to providing effective medical care, combined with unhygienic conditions and a language barrier, make this a most demanding service. Students communicate with the patients not through mere translation but also by learning some Lithuanian, singing songs, drawing portraits (where students have the necessary talents!) and of course making vital physical contact. The pinnacle of the service is reached on the penultimate day of the course when a concert is performed by the students for all the patients. "I learned a lot during this Short Course and we had many wonderful, meaningful experiences. I will never forget hugging this elderly, crying lady, who had to suffer so many losses during her life, so many handicaps she had to cope with, things I hadn't ever thought of." (Marlene Nahrgang, Germany, SC Lithuania 1999)