Students volunteer, make connections with community
By Sydney Syverson
Junior Jamie Kerr was beaming with enthusiasm as 1,500 members of the community jammed in tightly around a bonfire at Roosevelt High School's homecoming on Nov. 6.
It wasn't too difficult to stay warm since every student, staff member and volunteer got a free sweatshirt at the game.
The festivities began around 1 p.m. and included a barbecue, bonfire and parade of classic cars.
Kerr and several other UP students worked and volunteered at the homecoming celebration.
Kerr is the campus volunteer coordinator for Roosevelt High School, which is a low-income school with many at-risk students.
She helps coordinate and organize the 16 work study students who work at Roosevelt doing tutoring and many other activities.
Kerr herself works at Roosevelt for about 12 hours a week helping work study students.
"A lot of the volunteers for Roosevelt activities are for one-day events such as the Trick-or-Vote event we just did where we registered people to vote and told them about homecoming at Roosevelt," Kerr said. "I think because the volunteers are usually working events and not just pulling weeds, it's really fun for them."
The Moreau Center for Service and Leadership is the best resource for UP students who are looking for volunteer events around Portland.
"One of the Moreau Center's main goals is to get students involved in the community through volunteer experiences," Laura Goble, director of Moreau Center for Service and Leadership, said. "We want the students to really know their community."
Not only does the Moreau Center offer service learning trips, such as the civil rights plunge, but it also provides many other ways for students to get involved in the community.
There are five campus volunteer coordinators who act as ambassadors between their organizations and UP.
The organizations are Big Brothers Big Sisters, Brother Andre Café, Transition Projects, Roosevelt High School and Open Meadow Alterative School.
Junior Juliet Zimmer is the campus volunteer coordinator for Transition Projects, an organization that provides emergency shelters for the homeless in Portland.
Zimmer works at Transition Projects every Friday for about five hours. Once every two weeks, she organizes a group of students to go to the shelter and serve a meal.
The first volunteer opportunity for Transition Projects was on Nov. 9.
"When we got back from serving dinner, I conducted a sort of closing reflection with the students," Zimmer said. "They all told me that their stereotypes of the homeless were wrong and that they had a really positive experience."
Although one-time volunteer events are easy for students to get involved with, Goble stresses that volunteerism shouldn't be just a one-time event.
"It's important that students have consistency with organizations," Goble said. "Students need to see volunteering as a relationship with their community."
Although the Moreau Center offers students information about volunteering and is a great resource, it isn't the only place to find volunteer and community service events.
Many professors encourage and sometimes even require their students to do community service around Portland.
A few of these professors are Eric Anctil, Renee Heath and Joseph Gallegos.
Both Heath and Anctil had classes recently involved with the Trick-or-Vote event.
In Heath's Persuasion and Leadership class, she requires her students to work on one of four different ongoing projects, that all have some kind of service or awareness component to them.
Some of these students are working with the Moreau Center to bring a viewing of the documentary "Papers" to campus in December.
"I think community service is really important for students, and UP is committed to connecting students with service," Heath said. "We understand that learning extends outside the walls of the classroom."
Gallegos takes his Cultural Variations in Aging class to different senior centers, where they serve lunch three times throughout the semester through the organization Loaves and Fishes.
Gallegos also takes his Social Work and Social Justice class to several site visits and required community service events.
Some of these include the Children's Relief Nursery located in St. Johns, the Oregon Food Bank and St. Francis Dining Hall.
Junior Charlie Hinckle is one of the students in the Social Work and Social Justice class.
"I think community service requirements in classes are good because it's so easy to get wrapped up in the UP bubble and remain oblivious to everything else," Hinckle said. "It's good to get prodded to step outside of that bubble in order to understand the community we live in."
Besides the Moreau Center and professors, students can also track down community service projects online.
According to Michelle Chang, program assistant for the Moreau Center, the Catholic Network of Volunteer Service, Stop Oregon Litter and Vandalism and Hands on Portland all have online databases that can connect students with volunteer opportunities.
Whether a student wants to serve a meal to the homeless at Transition Projects, pull weeds at Oregon Food Bank or help kids with arts and crafts at the Children's Relief Nursery, the resources for volunteering are available.
"Students can even use volunteering experiences in their classes and while writing papers," Goble said. "The Moreau Center challenges students to think outside of the box and get involved."
