They plastered, dry-walled, taped, spackled, sanded, landscaped, sawed, nailed, and cleaned — all in the name of creating a new recreation center for kids in the basement of the First Baptist Church in Cambridge. And they did it on a workday.

In June, about 50 staff members from the Center for Business and Government and the Institute of Politics came together to work on a first-ever, joint-center-Friday community service project that center directors Ira Jackson and David Pryor pledged to make an annual rite of spring. Organized by City Year, a national youth service corps that was conceived, in part, at the Kennedy School, the day spent getting hands dirty was, says Pryor, what a school of government is all about.

As an added bonus, said lecturer Jack Donahue MPP 1982, PhD 1988 as he was ready to call it a day, community service is a way to take the abstract of academia and make it real. “A lot of us write books, teach classes, engage in research, and hope that somehow, somewhere, our efforts end up making a difference to society,” he said. “Today we all had the satisfaction of doing something much more concrete. We end the day pointing to something physical that we know will, in fact, leave this place a little better for the future.”