On April 8, Wake Forest students gathered on Davis Field to work alongside elementary school students and their families to transform ordinary wooden desks into colorful workspaces. As paintbrushes whisked across the desks and laughter began to engulf the field, student volunteers worked in tandem with the children to help bring their designs to life at this year’s Discovering Education through Student Knowledge (DESK) event.
The annual student-led initiative promotes educational equity by providing local students with personalized desks. Executive team member Avery Donaldson emphasized DESK’s role in fostering positive associations with learning for participating elementary school students.
“The main focus is to bring kids a space where they can get excited about going to school,” Donaldson said. “So the main goal is to give the kids an area of their home where they’re excited to actually work. By letting them design their own desk, we have an event where we encourage education.”
DESK also raises funds for the Wake Forest Freedom School, a summer program that supports local K-12 students with literacy development.
This year’s senior director of DESK, Remy Cush, helped coordinate the effort between over 400 volunteers, elementary school students and other local partners.
“The main goal of DESK stems from wanting to support and promote educational equity in our community,” Cush said. “DESK aims to boost accessibility and share some of the many resources Wake Forest is so lucky to have.”
DESK creates an environment for students in the community to engage with Wake Forest in a creative, hands-on manner while promoting long-term educational engagement. The event reinforces a shared commitment to education both inside and outside the classroom.
Student engagement and community
DESK offers Wake Forest students an opportunity to connect directly with the local community. Volunteers from a variety of student organizations, such as club sports, Greek life and academic departments, participated throughout the afternoon. Students in matching organization T-shirts crowded around tables, while families walked across the field. Occasionally, passersby stopped to watch the desks slowly come to life.
Senior Chris Bunn, co-president of Club Swimming, said the event provided an opportunity to reconnect with an experience he valued in the past.
“This is my first and last DESK, so I’ve never been a part of this before,” Bunn said. “The big thing that I’m looking forward to is just working with the kids, though. I worked with the kids the first couple summers of college as a swim coach, so this is like my little opportunity to work with them again.”
Bunn also emphasized the long-term impact of the desks themselves.
“A lot of [the students] come from less fortunate families, so I think having a place to work in their house is great, and knowing that makes me feel really good,” Bunn said. “So that’s really the main thing, just them having their own place to do their homework, and I think they’re gonna have fun when looking up to the bigger kids here too.”
Other student volunteers took note of the scale and energy of the event. Freshman Timothy Kindy, a member of the Wake Forest Baptist Student Union, was struck by the turnout.“There are a lot more people than I expected,” Kindy said. “Like I’m seeing a lot of different groups that I didn’t really realize would be here.”
Kindy also commented on the personal nature of the desks, noting that their designs came directly from the children themselves. Styles this year ranged from favorite cartoon characters to sports logos.
“We’ve got drawings from the kids detailing what their ideal desk is like,” Kindy said. “We’re going to try and build their dream desk.”
Around the field, children smiled as they used the colors freely. Volunteers helped the children translate their ideas onto the desks or simply bantered with them.
Behind the scenes and event organization
While painting took the center stage at DESK, organizers emphasized the extensive amount of preparation required to bring the event together.
Jack O’Connor, a member of the DESK acquisition committee, described a multifaceted focus on both fundraising and logistics.
“We do a lot of fundraising with candy grams and selling T-shirts,” O’Connor said. “Then for the desks, we brought them from Home Depot, set them up and primed them to get them ready for everyone to paint.”
After the event, the volunteers began setting the desks aside in rows to dry overnight. The edges of Davis Field gradually filled with the finished pieces that will eventually be delivered to the participating elementary schools.
“We really get to make an impact on a child’s life,” sophomore volunteer Hayden O’Connor said. “We get to make their day and do something special for them, and I think they’re going to feel very supported and loved.”
