As a college student, community service is very beneficial to the volunteers. Salisbury University has taken the initiative to encourage more students to participate in these service opportunities by creating an annual event called “I Love Salisbury.” Salisbury’s website explains this as an event in which students can “help clean up public, private and non-profit properties.” The event this year was held on November 12, 2016 and it was hosted by Student Government Association (SGA). At the event, participants were congratulated for being included in the tally of students that registered which totaled over 1,000. This included members of student clubs, organizations and members of Greek life. Each group was given an address and materials for their task and after the opening ceremony, they proceeded to their assigned locations.
The location assignment was based upon the amount of people a group had registered for the event. In the event that a group didn’t have enough people to show up to volunteer, they would simply join another team and complete the tasks together. NAACP and Men of Distinction is an example of two groups that joined teams and raked one of the lawns belonging to a local community member.
I love Salisbury is a great opportunity for students to not only network between each other, but with community members as well. The community members that the students are helping, truly value the student taking time to come help them. A lot of college students might rather be doing other things but the students that came out to the event, really enjoyed making someone else’s day. Engaging in community service allows you to grow as a person and expand your view on the world. Not everyone is as fortunate as you are so you should take an interest in helping the community you are a part of.