MISH Reimagined for the Year Ahead

While the School’s longstanding student-run community service group is keeping the MISH acronym, its words and the meaning behind them are getting a fresh start. 

Julia Panos ’27, along with co-chairs Emily Kasoff ’27, Rose Yuan ’28 and Emily Mirkin ’28 explained the move to reframe MISH. “We changed the acronym to be Masters Invested in Serving Humanity (from Masters Interested in Sharing and Helping) to reflect our mission that MISH is really about reciprocal service and meeting people where they are while building intentional connection between people.”

Marie-Louise Miller, associate dean of purposeful engagement, said, “We have a fantastic cohort of over 60 students as members. And we're opening applications for ninth grade students and new students to join us this fall.”

First up on the calendar, MISH will collaborate with the Pickle for a Purpose club to co-host their second annual pickleball tournament on Sunday, October 18, to help raise awareness and collect school supplies to ship to the African Dream Academy in Liberia.

Next will be a collaboration with the Athletics Department for the Children's Village Thanksgiving Food Drive from Monday, October 12, to Sunday, November 15. Miller said Children’s Village aims to reunite local children and families for the holidays, so MISH's goal is to help them provide 1,500 Thanksgiving meals this year. Other events include the annual campus Blood Drive on Thursday, November 12, with the New York Blood Center and a new MISH-driven project, Open Table, Open Minds.

Panos is excited to kick-start the Open Table project: “It is a civil discourse series where we're going to invite different community leaders to come to campus to talk about Important issues in a philosophical and non-political way.”

Meanwhile, Yuan and Mirkin, along with MISH members Aidan Mondésir ’29 and Hudson Sonnenburg ’29, will be supporting the village of Dobbs Ferry’s Zero Waste campaign with the Sustainable Dobbs organization at a booth at the Ferry Festa, an annual community fair, this Saturday, October 3, from 1:00–4:00 p.m. 

Panos is confident of what lies ahead: “I think that MISH is the definition of Masters and being a power for good in the world, which is exactly what we intend to do.”