Homelessness has long been an important issue to Anais Munoz, who remembers learning that even her classmates in elementary school had to deal with homelessness. Some of them didn’t have access to indoor plumbing and had to do their homework under streetlights.
Over the past few years, the fifth-year Chicana/o studies student said she has worked to combat homelessness through volunteering, which most recently included a Day of Service on Saturday.
Munoz was among a group of about 30 UCLA students who distributed backpacks of food, water and hygiene products to the homeless in Santa Monica and Venice as part of the Undergraduate Students Association Council Community Service Commission’s Day of Service.
The commission assigned these students to volunteer with Giving Spirit, an organization that distributes health and food kits to the homeless, as part of the annual Day of Service, in which 340 students volunteered at one of the commission’s 12 sites.
The commission organizes events like the Day of Service each quarter for students who might be new to community service and might find a passion for it in one of the commission’s 31 ongoing projects, said Amanda Tapia, a third-year political science student who coordinated this year’s event.
Day of Service differs from other events like Volunteer Day in that students are able to select the theme of the site where they serve, giving them the opportunity to work with something they care about, said Garima Verma, a fourth-year psychology and communications student and assistant commissioner for CSC.
Alex Pham, another student volunteer, said he had never worked with the homeless before.
As he approached a man lying on a cardboard sheet on the grass in Santa Monica’s Christine Emerson Reed Park, Pham asked if he would like some food and water. Then, he introduced himself as a second-year microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics student at UCLA.
The man, who said his name was Bobby, added that he was surprised to learn that Pham was offering the entire backpack and not just some of its contents before engaging Pham in conversation about his studies and future plans.
Pham and the other student volunteers followed a script described to them by Giving Spirit representative Mike Savage. Student volunteers were instructed to offer people who looked like they might be homeless food, water and a smile before transitioning into conversation, Savage said.
Before saying goodbye, Pham shook Bobby’s hand with a smile and told him that UCLA students were thinking of him, supporting him and trying to help him come back from the circumstances that had made him homeless.
Other sites featured in the Day of Service included the Mountains Restoration Trust where students cleaned up a trail along the Topanga ridgeline, and United Cerebral Palsy Wheels for Humanity where students built wheelchairs.
Even though she had worked with the homeless before, Munoz said that distributing the backpacks gave her the opportunity to interact with the people she was serving and hear their stories, some of which brought her to tears.
“Day of Service is about students learning the ways in which they can get involved in remedying the ills of our community,” Tapia said.