Community Service

Students across the country offered their time and services Oct. 25 for national Make a Difference Day.   Make a Difference Day began in 1992 by USA Weekend Magazine to encourage community service on a local scale. An estimated 3 million or more Americans took part in this year’s events nationwide. The annual event happens the fourth Sunday every October. Ten volunteer projects were awarded $10,000, the proceeds of which will go to the charity of the winner’s choice.   Students at the University of New Mexico were some of the approximately 4,000 volunteers in more than 100 projec

On Oct. 24, seven groups from Iowa State hosted their annual Reggie’s Sleepout, an event designed to raise money and awareness for homeless youth in central Iowa. Participants raised funds by soliciting sponsors, and “slept out” at a local stadium for a night. Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity was one of the groups participating in the event. The fraternity’s service chair, Joe Nobile, a freshman in speech communication, said the opportunity was suggested by a member of the fraternity who went through the foster care system for several years. “I think it will really open their eyes to how

On October 14th, student organizers from igKnite, the student organization of the Knight Center for International Media at the University of Miami, hosted a “Stand Up and Take Action” event to fight global poverty. The free event featured live music, art, dance, and guest speakers.   Student organizers teamed up with local activists from the ONE organization to cosponsor the event. “ONE is a grassroots campaign and advocacy organization backed by more than 2 million people who are committed to the fight against extreme poverty and preventable disease, particularly in Africa,” ONE states

Though Berkeley Project Day had a $2,000 funding shortfall this year, approximately 1,700 student volunteers at the University of California-Berkeley gathered to clean streets and parks in the East Bay.   This was the fourth year running for the program, and though the number of student volunteers dropped by 200, coordinators of the project made up for the loss of people and lack of funding by efficiently using resources and carefully selecting project sites.   According to senior Emily Ng, Co-Finance Director of the event, most local companies that donated to the event in past y

Northwestern University’s communication honor society Lambda Pi Eta (LPH) is launching a partnership with Reading in Motion, a Chicago-based reading program for elementary school students living in high risk areas. The partnership will have Northwestern students using art and music to teach reading to children in kindergarten through third grade. “This is the first year that LPH has had philanthropy,” said junior Natalie Tapaskar, philanthropy director for LPH. “We are trying to be pioneers and start something new.” Tapaskar found the organization online and chose it because it fits with th

Student organizers at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania began a “Shoes for Haiti” campaign to provide Haitian schoolchildren aged 7 to 18 with much-needed shoes that will be delivered April 15, 2010. The program, sponsored by Partners in Progress for Haiti, is “helping the organized poor in Haiti to help themselves to overcome lifetimes of misery, chronic scarcity of resources, [and] decades of environmental degradation through self reliance, grassroots democracy and communal organization.” Over 85 IUP students attended the first project meeting and will soon place collection boxes,

In an effort to increase civic engagement, Miami University of Ohio now offers grants for students’ social awareness projects of up to $1,000.     The grants are funded by the University’s Parents’ Fund as part of a plan to engage students in social action through the university’s Office of Community Engagement and Service (OCES). The office promotes students taking interest in their communities in order to encourage social thinking outside of the university. In addition to the grants from Parents' Fund, students will also be able to receive financial backing from the Western

Community service is as popular as ever with students at Gannon University, where on Saturday they launched a cross-country project called GIVE day that set up opportunities for students and alumni to volunteer in cities from Chicago to Buffalo. GIVE day, whose starting acronym means Gannon’s Invitation to Volunteer Everywhere, had opportunities that ran the gamut from environmental cleanup of public parks and beaches to social services such as building low cost housing and providing food and other articles to homeless people. Students at Gannon University participated heavily in the progra