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Over 800 students and faculty participate in day of service

Posted on Mar 08, 2010 in News

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UAB’s biannual Into the Streets event was held on Saturday, March 6. Students, faculty and staff completed more than 3,600 hours of service at 31 sites in the Birmingham-metro area.

More than 800 students participated in Saturday’s Into the Streets. Students lined up outside the HUC at 8 a.m. to sign up for the sites.

While a number of projects were described as “community clean-up,” there were many sites with a different kind of goal.

For example, students who volunteered at the Altamont Retirement Community gave manicures to the elderly residents there.

Those who volunteered at Oak Knoll found themselves playing bingo. Other students helped to inventory and organize medical equipment.

There were 31 sites in all, from the Botanical Gardens to the McWane Center, including projects such as painting elementary school playgrounds, cleaning up public parks, and sorting donations at local Salvation Army stores.
Site leader Steven Wise said that service projects in previous years have always varied like this. Students have walked dogs and made toys at the zoo for monkeys.

When asked about the goals of Into the Streets, Wise and his fellow site leader Pritesh Patel said that it was planned to get as many students involved as possible.

“If you can get someone to volunteer once, they’ll volunteer again,” said Patel.

Wise said that Into the Streets has always been successful, and it has almost had “too much participation. We’re always overbooked.”

Last fall’s event had 950 participants, and that number goes up every year.

Wise and Patel led a group of students in cleaning up the Arlington West End Neighborhood in what they described as a “community church cleanup.”

In a speech kicking off the event, Dr. Jarralynne Agee, who teaches at UAB and Miles College and who has taught service learning classes at the University of California, Berkeley, encouraged students to volunteer.

Agee told students that volunteering is more than community service, it is an opportunity to be involved with the community and to grow as a person.

Agee asked students to consider how volunteering affects the volunteers, not just the people who are helped by service.

Students met back on the Green for lunch and received a free T-shirt after their volunteer work was done. This was the first event where lunch was held on the Green.

Into the Streets was organized by the UAB Leadership and Service Council, which provides many other service opportunities for students, including volunteering at the Ronald McDonald House, Habitat for Humanity, the Salvation Army Soup Kitchen and Glen Iris Elementary School.

The Leadership and Service Council also sponsors monthly service projects.

Email: jwwolfe@uab.edu