Today’s guest post is from Katie Mang, the Member Engagement Manager for The National Society of Collegiate Scholars. She is from Northeast Ohio and graduated from Kent State University with a BA in Interpersonal Communication and M.Ed. in Higher Education. Katie’s interests include civic engagement, higher education, social media, writing and baking. Follow her on Facebook or Twitter.

Image via http://bikevirginia.org/volunteer/ Each year The Points of Lights Institute hosts National Volunteer Week, encouraging citizens across the nation to get involved in community service and civic engagement. This year, National Volunteer Week falls April 10th – 16th. This week serves as a reminder to get involved in giving back all year long. There are many reasons to get involved in service projects. It can be a rewarding experience, as well as a great way to meet new people. You can get involved in civic projects to learn more about a subject or organization and gain new skills. You might even learn something about yourself! Like many others, you may already be interested in service but wondering, how do I begin? Your local campus community is a great place to get started. There are a large number of campus organizations that are dedicated to service or already deeply involved in projects and seeking new volunteers. Whether you are a student, staff or faculty member you can provide your skills, resources and time to really make a difference. You can choose to go straight to the club or organization, or ask your Student Activities or Civic Engagement/Service-Learning Office for information and direction. Before making a commitment to service, you should also consider the following:

Where does service fit into your class, work and extracurricular schedule? What unique skills do you hope to bring to a service project? Are there certain organizations, locations or populations that you would like to seek out specifically? Would you prefer a one-time service project, or are you available to make a long-term commitment?

After you have found an organization(s) that fits your schedule and goals, you may also want to ask some questions of the service coordinator:

What opportunities are available? How can you get involved? What is the mission of the organization? How do they serve others? Are there any training or orientation opportunities? Are there any other requirements before you can get involved (background checks, homework, references)? What can I expect when I serve? Who is the leader at the site?

You can choose to make one commitment with an organization, or try a few projects until you find one that suits you just right. Don’t be afraid to get out of your comfort zone, as these opportunities tend to be some of the best experiences. Share your stories, ask questions, encourage others to join and reflect after your project is complete. Most importantly, remember that service is a two way experience. Not only will you help those that you service, but they will also be surely to touch you, too!

Today’s guest post is from Elizabeth Bailey, a sophomore English major at Northeastern University in Boston and contributing writer for BostInnovation. She is the Vice President of Scholarship for Sigma Delta Tau and her interests include: law, ballroom dancing, and chess. Follow her on Twitter @EABailes! When I went through sorority recruitment last fall, doing community service did not exactly top my list of things to look forward to. I had already done a ton of it in high school, and I thought to myself, what could possibly be new about volunteering at another library or raising money for another charity? Those were things that I had always enjoyed doing, but I never really got to see the way my work was benefiting others. So why were all of these women telling me about how thrilled they were to be able to do various community service events, whether these were kickball tournaments to raise money for a philanthropy, or just doing a cleanup of an area in Boston? It seemed that I heard the same canned story several times during recruitment, and I was looking for something more. Fast forward through the end of recruitment, Bid Day, and a couple weeks of my New Member program as a future sister of Sigma Delta Tau. With all of the information I was receiving about the sorority and how it operated, I hadn’t thought much about the community service we were all required to do every semester. However, we had just started up a new initiative that would involve sending sisters to hold a “game night” each Wednesday for the residents of the Children’s Hospital Yawkee Family Inn, a temporary home for the families of hospitalized children who have traveled to Boston for its noted medical care. I distinctly remember running into two of the girls from my New Member class as they were coming back from Yawkee and being a little surprised when one of them told me, “You have to go next week! It was one of the best experiences of my life. The kids are precious.” Giving up a Wednesday night to do community service for a couple of hours didn’t seem so daunting anymore! So I signed up for several Wednesdays after that and found exactly what the two had been raving about; playing board games, cooking dinner, and just chatting with the families I met became a weekly vacation from the stress of college life. I’ve made relationships with so many people I never would have met without our initiative to work there. Two young men who were pursuing musical careers were kind enough to sing a sweet duet for my sisters and I as we baked a cake for them and the rest of the Yawkee residents. One week I was even lucky enough to be able to practice my Spanish while talking cultural differences with a woman from Spain, learning about her favorite dishes to cook and her thoughts on the US. Building block towers with the younger children and seeing their excitement whenever we’re there is always a new and incredible experience. Just having the ability to cheer up a single person on a day that probably hasn’t been their best is worth more than words, and the experience brings my sisters together more than Greek letters on sweatshirts. So what makes our involvement with Yawkee Family Inn possible? Dedication, enthusiasm, and organization via OrgSync. Although we just started using OrgSync last fall, we have become accustomed to regularly signing up on our SDT Calendar so that 4-5 sisters devote their Wednesday nights, and now Sunday mornings as well, to service at Yawkee. Shannon Denoia, our Community Service Chair, keeps track of the Calendar each week and makes sure to message sisters to remind them of their commitment the day before. OrgSync makes her job a lot easier because without it, we might still be passing around the old-fashioned signup sheet at Chapter meetings. It’s helped us to operate at very high capacity in all aspects of our sorority; the Calendar visually lays out our busy months, the Message feature allows us to communicate with certain groups within the organization, and the event RSVP button makes signing up for events simple. Although initially it was difficult to completely transition ourselves to OrgSync, however, this semester we’ve been able to clock 110 hours at Yawkee Family Inn, transition from the former Executive Board to the current one, and work with Kappa Sigma to raise $15,000 for Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Boston Medical Center. OrgSync has allowed us to become a very effective organization that constantly benefits our community, and it would be tough to imagine how we managed everything before it! I have been so fortunate to be able to bond with my sisters as we work to better the lives of our fellow Bostonians and visitors to the area like those at Yawkee, and I have found that something more that I was looking for in the stories I heard as just a freshman learning the ropes.

“Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country”, declared President Kennedy.

Ghandi implored, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has,” noted Margaret Mead. These often used quotations are quite popular within the student affairs community because they can be interpreted and applied to the work that we do with students on a daily basis. It should then come as no surprise that a fair amount of institutions of higher education have developed or are currently developing programs solely dedicated to community service and service-learning, most especially when referencing the quotations above. These programs are designed to target the issues affecting the communities in which the institutions are located. For example: 1) The Volunteer and Service Leadership Center at the University of Texas works with non-profit organizations in Austin, Texas  2) The Arizona Blue Chip Program at the University of Arizona works with individuals and groups in the Tucson, Arizona community These two institutions are dedicated to not only serving their local communities, but instilling in the students an understanding about why service to others is important and invaluable. The faculty and staff of programs and centers similar to the two listed above are taking initiative to give back to their communities. In light of President Obama’s “United We Serve” campaign coupled with Americorps, the idea and valuation of community service is garnering more attention. Educating students about the need for service should be commended and lauded, not devalued because it does not apply to ‘in-classroom’ experiences. As such, service to one’s community can be related to ‘in-classroom’ learning because depending on the class, it can always be asked, “where does the need for service originate?” – which relates to business, sociology, economics, and political science just to name a few. Hence, an influx in service-learning programs that not only allow students to perform community service, but ties in the academic component of evaluating the need and purpose for why the service was performed in the first place. These are exciting times ahead in the field of higher education and student affairs due to the increase in service-learning and community service programs that address the needs of not only the surrounding institution’s community, but the state, country, and globe.

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