More than 800 students have volunteered to wake up early this
Saturday and put in a day of work at community service sites around
Los Angeles.
UCLA’s third annual Community Service Day, organized by
the Undergraduate Students Association Council’s Community
Service Commission, will send participants to help out at a variety
of locations throughout the city.
Service sites will include homeless shelters, elementary
schools, a drug-abuse recovery center and a beach-cleanup location,
said Victoria Nguyen, the commission’s programs director and
a fourth-year political science student.
“It’s a great way to get the word out to the
community that UCLA students are involved in community
service,” Nguyen said.
Event coordinators plan to provide registered volunteers with
free meals, T-shirts and bus transportation to the volunteer
sites.
A community service fair is scheduled to take place after site
visitations end so students can learn about other service
opportunities, said Community Service Commissioner Farheen
Malik.
“The goal also is … to put into action whatever (the
volunteers) learn from that one day of service and put (it) into
action in their everyday lives,” she said.
The fair will feature tables from over 20 local service
organizations students can get involved with, as well as carnival
games, food, prizes and live music.
Only a handful of volunteers participated in the first Community
Service Day, which was held in 2003, but this year hundreds have
already registered.
“The first time was maybe about five people, so it
didn’t work out well,” Nguyen said.
But since then, attendance has increased exponentially. About
200 students volunteered last year, and Saturday’s event will
likely strain its 800-person capacity, she said.
Registration for the event is now closed. Students who want to
participate but have not registered are being put on a
wait-list.
“If everyone who registered actually shows up, then
there’s not room (for wait-listed volunteers),” Nguyen
said.
Malik said interested students should come Saturday morning
regardless of their registration status.
Some of the sites can accommodate more volunteers than are
scheduled to work, so students are welcome to use their own
transportation, she said.
“Hopefully we won’t turn people away,” she
said.
The sharp increase in participants is due in part to a new
group-registration feature, which makes it easier for groups of
friends to check in at the event and work together at the same
site, Malik said.
In previous years, students signed up individually, but
“this year they have more of a reason to come because they
have friends coming with them,” she said.
Jose Iniguez, the internal vice president of Dykstra Hall and a
second-year sociology student, spearheaded the organization of
Dykstra residents.
“We have this whole “˜Dykstra Love’ thing going
on. … We just all get along,” Iniguez said, explaining that
the positive atmosphere makes it natural for residents to volunteer
together.
Resident assistants, student health advocates and other student
leaders from Dykstra Hall came together to encourage residents to
register, which resulted in a Dykstra group of about 130, Iniguez
said.
“(We wanted to) get residents to go outside of Dykstra and
get an understanding of things that aren’t necessarily
perfect in society,” Iniguez said. “It’s kind of
like a learning experience.”
Community Service Day begins in the De Neve Plaza Rooms at 8:30
a.m. Saturday. The fair will be held in De Neve Plaza from 3:30 to
5 p.m.