Over 1,000 students and faculty took part in the eighth annual President’s Day of Service on Saturday, Sept. 24. Participants volunteered in more than 40 different sites around Baltimore.
Students chose between three different types of service projects: City Beautification, Hunger and Food Justice and Working with Animals & People. The projects took place from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m.
University President Ronald J. Daniels addressed the volunteers in the Ralph S. O’Conner Recreation Center before they each departed to their volunteer sites and encouraged them to give back to the community.
“If the roughly 1,100 people here today did 50 hours of service a piece between now and April, that’s 55,000 hours of service, 3.3 million minutes, 6.2 years... all before Spring Fair is over,” Daniels said.
Daniels also advocated for HopServe50, a new initiative encouraging University students to commit to 50 hours of community service in an academic year. When Daniels joined the University in 2009, he established the President’s Day of Service as a University-wide event to contribute to local non-profit organizations.
Many Hopkins groups took the day of service as an opportunity to give back to the community.
Freshman Raphael Bechtold participated as a member of the Varsity Swim Team. He worked with the Friends Stony Run to help clear vegetation growing over sidewalks. Their group removed litter and beautified a walking trail that runs along the Stony Run.
“As a swim team, we all decided to participate in the President’s Day of Service as a way to give back to the area surrounding Baltimore and surrounding Hopkins that we all love,” Bechtold said.
Staff Coordinator for the President’s Day of Service Megan Scharmann said volunteer projects are a way for students to discover the opportunities for service in their communities.
“I think that it’s a really great way for a lot of students to go out and be involved in their community on the ground level,” Scharmann said. “It’s also a very good way for students to find out about ways they can get involved and be good citizens of Baltimore.”
Scharmann also touched on the unifying aspect of community service and how she would like to see students become more regular contributors.
“I’d love to see it really transition into something that encourages Hopkins students to, one, be involved in their community outside the bounds of campus on a more regular basis and, two, to encourage them to really recognize the places in which many community members in Baltimore are already doing great and necessary work for this city and figuring out the best ways to support that work,” Scharmann wrote in an email to The News-Letter.
Sophomore Colleen Anderson volunteered with People’s Homesteading Group to help clean yards and a community garden that had overgrown. She commented that although the work was tiring, it was a rewarding experience.
“I was very tired by the end, and my group finished... before the three hours was even up,” Anderson said. “With the number of volunteers we had in my section, we were able to finish everything very quickly.”
Sophomore Natalia Rincon also worked with People’s Homesteading Group, and has participated in the President’s Day of Service since her freshman year.
“We just wanted to do our part for the community,” Rincon said.
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