On April 23, Central College will sponsor its annual campus-wide Service Day in which students, faculty and staff will work on dozens of volunteer projects around central Iowa. Classes will be cancelled to allow students to participate.
Volunteers sign up to help with one the 70 community service projects in Pella and central Iowa. Some projects in the Pella area include removing trash and invasive species, cleaning up Highway 163, removing trash from Lake Red Rock and working with the Pella schools.
Outside Pella, students can participate in projects such as brush removal at the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge, serving breakfast and playing with elementary and middle school students at Children and Family Urban Ministries in Des Moines and serving meals at the Des Moines Catholic Worker House.
“Service day complements our academic service-learning,” said Cheri Doane, director of the Center for Community-Based Learning. “Whereas the course-based service involves individual, sustained service, Service Day allows us to respond to community requests for large numbers of volunteers for one-time projects.”
Service Day was established so that Central students, faculty and staff could unite to build community. The project is also an opportunity for Central to give back to community partners who have helped the college in the past.
During the 2011-12 school year, students completed 73,602 hours of community service. Based on United Way’s estimate of the value of an hour of community service, these hours amount to $1,572,138.70 of work.