Nearly 800 incoming students at the University of Colorado Boulder will spend their first Saturday as college students helping others in the community during the “Buff Day of Service” on Aug. 23.
Buff Day of Service volunteers will take on numerous projects in and around Boulder, including landscaping at many community organizations, flood recovery and cleanup, yard cleanup for seniors, trail restoration, and interior and exterior painting at local elementary schools. The service day gives first-year students an opportunity to get out into their new community and experience its needs and culture beyond the borders of the campus, according to Heidi Vielhaber, coordinator of service learning for Residence Life at CU-Boulder.
One of the goals of the service day is to help students connect with their new community.
“We hope that participants will connect with other students, begin to see themselves as not only CU Buffs but as citizens in the Boulder community, and start to think about the ways they want to engage with Boulder during their time here and beyond,” Vielhaber said. “Service to our community is a value of CU, and we’d like to demonstrate that value early on by living it out through Day of Service.”
In 2013, about 600 students from the Stearns East residence hall in Williams Village and the Leadership Residential Academic Program (RAP) participated. The student projects included painting and beautification at University Hill and Creekside Elementary schools, and a University Hill cleanup project with the University Hill Neighborhood Association.
This year students from Williams Village, the Leadership RAP, Sustainability and Social Innovation RAP, Sustainable by Design RAP and international students living on campus are participating.
The service event also offers students a chance to learn firsthand about group leadership, personal responsibility and what it means to contribute to a community’s well-being.
“We really hope this is a tradition in the making for CU-Boulder students,” Vielhaber said.
Other volunteer and service opportunities available to CU-Boulder students include:
- The Volunteer Resource Center, http://volunteer.colorado.edu/
- Sept. 2 Volunteer Fair, http://volunteer.colorado.edu/events/volunteer-fair
- Give A Day, http://volunteer.colorado.edu/events/give-day
Alternative Breaks, http://volunteer.colorado.edu/alternativebreaks
Contact:
Heidi Vielhaber, CU-Boulder Residence Life, 303-492-9176
Greg Swenson, CU-Boulder media relations, 303-492-3113
