On Tuesday and Wednesdays, Pforzheimer residents help kids with math and English homework. They also teach interactive lessons in small groups of two to four students.

"Tutors can make a significant impact even by helping with just one assignment," Chien says.

HAND's One-shot Program brings neighborhood kids together with Harvard students for a one-time community service event.

"One-shots are good because they give students who can't promise a long-term commitment an opportunity to do community service," says Grace M. Lee '99, HAND's One-Shot coordinator at Pforzheimer House.

For Halloween, Pforzheimer HAND staged a costume party and a trick-or-treat tour through the house. About 35 children, 20 from the Fitzgerald After-School Program, were dressed in costume by one-shot volunteers and taken trick-or-treating around the house.

"It's a safe way to spend Halloween and a great chance for the kids to see beyond their homes and get a glimpse of college," Lee says.

"It's also good to see how many people in the House were willing to give up their time, especially on a Friday afternoon."

Uprooting Seeds of Conflict

Peace Games, rather than focusing on academics, is determined to change America's culture of violence one school at a time, says executive director Eric Dawson '96.

Started at Harvard in 1992, Peace Games is now an independent non-profit organization with more than 300 college volunteers, 80 of them Harvard students.

About 20 of them teach in nine classes at the Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Cambridge. From first grade to eighth grade, students at King are taught conflict resolution and violence prevention.

Armed with skits and arts and crafts, three Peace Games teachers entered a second-grade classroom ready to train children in conflict resolution.

The three teachers prepared a skit in which an argument arose after an errant rollerblader ran over a sunbather.

The 12 students learned to stop fighting (arms extended, palms facing outwards), think about the situation (forefingers at temples), listen to the other person (fingers pointing to ears) and talk over the problem (open and close fingers and thumb).

After playing out the skit with various endings-an argument and a compromise--the teachers broke the class into small groups.