On April first this year some Carbondale nonprofit organizations will be swarming with students, staff and faculty volunteers doing a day of community service.
It’s called The Big Event, a Saluki day of service.
It’s the start of the Spring Semester, at SIU-C.
It might be cold now, but once the weather warms up new things will spring up everywhere.
One example: “the big event, a saluki day of service” … coming up on April first.
It’s a day of volunteering and saying thank you to community nonprofit organizations that help the Carbondale Community.
It’s modeled after Texas A&M’s big event established over 30 years ago.
"By the date of April first we will be planning for 2 years."- Cordy Love Director of New Student Programs
Interim Dean of University College Laurie Bell experienced the big event while working at Indiana Purdue Fort Wayne and suggested to organizers that this event fits in perfectly with SIU's history of giving back.
“Southern Illinois University has been known for volunteerism for quite some time, that’s not new to Southern. What’s unique with this opportunity is that we’re pulling it as one concerted effort in one day to become the largest give back opportunity of volunteerism to the community in the history of the institution. That’s what makes this special.”
Bell says it’s not only a way to help these organizations but also educates those involved about the community they live in.
“I think it’s interesting in that when we were in Indiana that the students got together with other students that they may not have known, faculty and staff and so forth that got together with at these different venues and learn about the different venues that the service organizations, the different businesses in the community that they didn’t know much about and the important work that they do and how they actually do support the institution.”
To pull off an event like this takes a lot of planning.
“I’ve been working on this for about a year and a half now, so by the date of April first we will be planning for 2 years.”
Director of new student programs Cordy Love is one of the main organizers.
He thinks this will be a big help for the university as well as the community.
“This is a great idea I’m very aware of the impact and benefits of what service does for our students as far as the retention of our students, the encourage of our students, the motivation of our students and so for me it was a no brainer I wanted to jump on board for this and really be a part of this, in my role I get to plan and do a lot of large scale events and so my expertise is bringing that into this here”
UCOL 101 coordinator Nick Weshinskey is the co-chair of the big event.
He says some of the impact will be noticeable right away, but there’s also some activities that the public won’t see.
“We have direct service projects which are students going out into the community to actually do some work. Some of those involve working at the boys and girls club, green earth, keep Carbondale beautiful those types of things, touch of nature as well. We also have indirect service projects and those are projects that are going to be done on campus for outside groups and so maybe making care packages, stocking things for the Good Samaritan house, doing stuff where they’re sending cards to veterans or something like that.”
Weshinskey says he hopes the students involved will learn more about Carbondale and sticking with the purpose of the big event saying thank you.
“I want students to know that Carbondale has done a lot to support SIU and this is our chance to give back to Carbondale. Carbondale is a wonderful place SIU is a wonderful place and this is an amazing opportunity to make friends, build community and do something good.”
There are over a dozen projects lined up for April 1st and the registration starts at the beginning of the semester, but there’s only one way to get involved.
“You can sign up on our website, the big event dot siu dot edu and we want anybody on campus to volunteer, we want faculty, staff, students."
And with that many projects its going to take a lot of people to accomplish it
“We’ve talked about this quite a bit and being the first time we’re really not quite sure but we’d like to see between 5 and 7 hundred students probably be involved with this project for the first time.”
Love says he hopes that by the volunteers saying thank you they will also be inspired for life.
“For us we’ll plan one day, but I want our students to really come back and go Man I had a really wonderful time at the boys and girls club I want to continue volunteering for that or I really enjoyed being out at touch of nature and want to come back and keep doing things, so if we can get our students to continue doing those things and continue giving back to their community we know that they’ll be life long learners. They’ll continue doing those things and hopefully down the road they’ll pick this up when they leave our SIU community and go back to their communities, they’ll continue doing these things and be part of that and then it becomes part of who you are.”
The group hopes that next year they can expand to other parts of the community and have the students run once they get it started.
