Campus life can be so engulfing that as the school year progresses, the University community may begin to forget the outside world of Eugene proper exists. Despite its carefully crafted brick buildings and tidy landscapes, campus often does not reflect the rest of its hometown’s condition.
More than 200 University students, faculty and staff members chose to break this paradigm and bring the love they have for their school out into the surrounding community Saturday by swinging hammers for Habitat for Humanity, pushing wheelbarrows for Food for Lane County and sorting used building materials at a Bring Recycling plant.
All of these efforts and a dozen more fell under the banner of Make a Difference Day, a nationally celebrated day of community service in its 20th year, which involved 3 million Americans last year. Last weekend’s various events and workshops were orchestrated by the University’s Service Learning Program , a volunteer-based community service program emphasizing intellectual development through volunteerism. In its second year of involvement with Make A Difference Day, the SLP was not deterred that United Way of Lane County’s Days of Caring took place a week before fall term began, and collaborated with the countywide basic needs provider to get University members involved again with a similar occasion.
The result was a widespread, tightly orchestrated all-day session of work directly related to community health, education and welfare.
Sinclair Ceasar, community relations coordinator at the University’s Holden Leadership Center, helped to coordinate the day’s activities, which he described as “having something for everyone.”
“Many different areas of need are going to be impacted that day by the University community,” Ceasar said.
The coordinator said the purpose of the day was to forge a collaboration between students and their teachers, a partnership that is often absent outside the classroom.
“It is a very easy way to give back to the community, and bring(s) together faculty, staff and students to have conversations about volunteerism and community service,” Ceasar said. “They are all going to be working side by side.”
Ceasar praised United Way for its philanthropic role, and was grateful that so many service organizations opted to entertain SLP participants.
“United Way played a big part in the coordination,” Ceasar said. “A lot of the organizations that we are working with are community partners that we refer students to when they come to our office.”
At GrassRoots Garden, an organic produce supplier for Food for Lane County, nearly a dozen SLP volunteers spent the overcast Saturday afternoon uprooting squash plants and dumping wheel-barrow loads of decaying leaves and bark mulch over a mound of food scraps to make sheet compost. The student volunteers ate a home-cooked vegetable lunch with GrassRoots staff and regular volunteers, and spoke casually about their united efforts to help nourish those facing hunger in Lane County.
University sophomore Richie Scott chose to lend a hand at the garden based on word-of-mouth, and said the experience meant much more than how it might look on paper.
“One of my good friends came here last year, and she said she had a spiritual experience,” Scott said. “This is not just something to put on your resume; it is a way to express love.”
Alysha Webb, another SLP volunteer, was amazed at the number of volunteers who convened at the outdoor dining area for the vegetable-heavy lunch.
“It was pretty awesome, and I didn’t expect so many people to be here,” Webb said. “I didn’t know they were going to be cooking, or using the ingredients from the garden to make lunch.”
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Make a Difference Day sends University staff and students out to help in the community
Daily Emerald
October 24, 2010
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