Busy as a bee

I can't believe it's been almost a month since Service Learning @ Campbell's last post! Time has flown and the last few weeks have been full of activities and blossoming ideas. Campbell students are in full swing, the football team has lost two games, and it's 95 degrees out with low humidity-- all signs that autumn is settling in Buies Creek.

Check out how faith, learning, and service have been excelling on campus:

- The first annual 9/11 Day of Service was a hit. Seventy students woke up early Saturday morning to give back in honor of the soldier(s) in their lives. All six projects went well and we can't wait to see what happens next year!

- The poverty miniseries is coming together. Speakers formerly in poverty or currently working with the impoverished will explore with us how poverty is more than just being poor. Check out the Facebook page for dates and times.

- If you want to get involved in tutoring or mentoring, you're at the right place at the right time. We're developing a service to help you figure out which organization is the best fit for you based on the mutual goals, schedules, and abilities of you and a tutoring or mentoring organization.


- Driving down Route 55 between Buies Creek and Angier will show you that it's picking season for North Carolina's migrant workers. The NC Farmworkers Project needs volunteers at its Thursday night clinics (May - October) to facilitate the clinics, present health information, translate, and just spend time with the migrant workers. If any of those activities are up your alley, give me a shout and we'll set you up to impact our community.


Lastly, as the temperatures cool and the holidays come around, I encourage you to step outside your own world and take a look at what others need. It could be something as simple as your neighbor needing a free babysitter for a night, or perhaps a family at church could use some help buying groceries this week. Or maybe, as we'll learn through the poverty miniseries, that needs related to poverty aren't always financial. Be a friend to the lady on your street who lives alone or be a role model to the too-skinny little kids always hanging out where they shouldn't be. Your purpose on earth is not to live for yourself.

This camel is also busy as a bee.

Snowballs in the summer

If you've been on campus recently you know that it exploded with activity and energy the day students moved back. When the students arrived my schedule immediately picked up speed, which I'm grateful for becuase it means the students want to be involved with serving the community.

My focus over the last two or three weeks has been hammering out the details of the 9/11 Day of Service, which is all over this blog and hopefully all over Facebook (see aforementioned link). I have a list of confirmed projects, flyers hot off the press, and over a dozen students signed up before the biggest wave of advertisements even goes out.

Every few days I learn of more entire groups of students who want to help out. Freshmen businesss students, a floor of a dorm, and an academic club have all volunteered to give back the morning of 9/11. 

All that to say-- quite frankly, I'm surprised that students are coming to me (and with such enthusiasm) instead of me going them. I thought I was going to have to pull teeth to have even decent attendance for the 9/11 Day of Service, not because I think students are self-centered, but because they have a life full of obligations to fulfill. The event has snowballed (in a good way) into something bigger than my organizational abilities and poster-making skills. 

(Hip, hip, hooray!)

As many students as we've had express interest, today I added another community partner to the list of service opportunities for 9/11. Local women's shelter S.A.F.E. of Harnett County needs a couple rooms and a fence painted. I personally have never even seen a women's shelter (which I think is the idea), and I'm hoping because of circumstances that lead to being in a shelter, our students haven't either. I think painting at the shelter, as "minor" a job it is, will offer students a glimpse into life most Americans only see on Law and Order or CSI.

My hope for the 9/11 Day of Service is that it's the pebble in the lake that enacts a powerful and unstoppable ripple effect of service.

9/11 Day of Service

The summer is slowly melting away, which means September is right around the corner!

Every September 11 we ask ourselves where we were on that day in 2001. This year, however, look forward to where you can be. Our first annual 9/11 Day of Service exists to honor the day and those who served on that day with service projects in the community.

Here's the list of opportunities:

Community-wide food drive: Help man the on-campus food collection location or manage one of the community collection locations to benefit the Food Bank of Harnett County.

Make cards for deployed soldiers: Local organization Helping Hands for Heroes needs our help making greeting cards for deployed soldiers. Show them how much you care!

Interior church painting: Baptist Fellowship of Angier could use a few new coats. Spend the morning beautifying a place of worship and working your arms!

Literacy awareness: Inform the community about the importance of literacy and literacy opportunities at Harnett Literacy by canvassing neighborhoods with flyers and brochures.

Quality time with the elderly: Spend the morning playing Bingo with and bringing joy to the residents of Brookfield Assisted Living.

Registration will begin at the UCM Expo Night and continue at the Info Desk until September 3. As always, feel free to contact me for more information.

Bearing the burdens of others

The notion of serving the community is a historical but growing one at Campbell. And by "growing" I mean mushroom clouding into something massive and, as I wrote in an earlier post, something bigger than ourselves.

I've spent the the majority of this week calling around to different area non-profits to see if they could use a few business students help out. Every organization I speak with is overjoyed that not only does someone know about them and want to help, but that the help is able bodied college students with camels on their shirts (everything's more fun when you have a camel on your shirt).

Some of these organizations have worked with Campbell during Operation Inasmuch. Some of the staff of these organizations went to Campbell or have a grandchild or second cousin at Campbell. Some just drive by every day wondering how many fountains one university can handle. Either way, it seems every soul in Harnett County has a Campbell connection that further edifies their enthusiasm to work with us.

I'm noticing a pattern in my dialogue with these grateful non-profits. They exist to serve their communities and to satisfy needs, but the organizations themselves have great needs. The ripple effect of service hasn't quite reached them.

Whether service from Campbell comes in the form of relief to the non-profit organization or directly to the population in need, our time and efforts should alleviate the burden of poverty and want in our small corner of the world.

Not just another day

The AmeriCorps VISTA program sponsors many service initiatives outside service learning. In addition to the MLK Day of Service (which Campbell already does) and the AmeriCorps Week of Service, this year we'll join VISTA campuses across the country in celebrating a day of service I didn't know existed until recently, despite being a news junkie.


Last year President Obama declared 9/11 a day of service in order to reflect on the period of history that prompted "...Americans to come together in a remarkable spirit of unity and compassion," according his call to service last August.

The Corporation for National and Community Service, a partner organization of AmeriCorps, supports the 9/11 Day of Service along with many others service organizations. 


I'm really excited about Campbell's first 9/11 Day of Service. Not only does Campbell have a strong military presence in its student body through the ROTC program, but we have three extended campuses on three bases: Fort Bragg, Campe Lejeune, and Pope Air Force Base.


This year's 9/11 Day of Service is just beginning to take shape, but here are a few highlights to peak your interest:

• The day will begin with an opening ceremony at the flagpole on campus.
• We're offering up the idea to students to commit to a service project in honor of a soldier they know.
• The service projects are local and diverse.

Below is a public service announcement from the September 11 National Day of Service and Remembrance promoting the day.


Lots of links to many different sites all about service, but the common thread is focusing to serve others on 9/11 in honor of those who serve us the other 364 days of the year.

In the beginning...

This real camel from
Welcome Week '09
is really pumped about
helping the community!

I'm proud to announce that Service Learning @ Campbell has arrived!


Mind you it's my first day on the job and all I've done is schedule meetings and try to figure out how to transfer calls. Baby steps.


We (Campus Ministries and myself) have spent the summer hammering out details and preparing as much as possible to take off on this adventure. We've read the books, Googled a few things and attended the workshops. 


Perhaps the most monumental baby step was attending AmeriCorps VISTA Pre-Service Orientation, four days of ice breakers, info sessions and really good food. It provided many points of clarity on a few questions Faithe and I had about this undertaking.


The one huge lesson with which I returned to Raleigh was this:


Our work is bigger than ourselves.


This year's goals are more than just convincing college students to want to help out. It's not just being nice to our Spanish-speaking neighbors.


On the local level the work we do in the coming months and years will ripple out in ways we may never discover. In an even bigger picture, over 7,000 VISTAs all over the country are executing anti-poverty initiatives that together will weave a cloth of hope and success for our fellow Americans, impoverished or not.


Check back for more frequent updates to the life and times of Service Learning @ Campbell.

Two scoops of service, please.

Tonight the university is wrapping up orientation season. Every incoming freshman has learned very briefly how to find the library, how to find dinner, and most importantly-- how to serve.


We had 500 smiling faces and eager hands preparing 20,000 meals for Stop Hunger Now. New to the orientation line up was a special local project to assemble backpacks full of food and school supplies for elementary school students under the wings of the Baptist Fellowship of Angier.


While the service projects aren't the definition of service learning, they give students a taste of service and get them thinking about it. The projects are the tip of the service learning iceberg.


The Class of 2014 will be the first class to enter Campbell with the service learning program. Together, the students and program will grow up together in Buies Creek. I've watched the incoming class and am incredibly hopeful that service learning at Campbell will flourish through these 1,000 bright and passionate students.


I spoke to the parents again and offered the same words I did at the first orientation session. My shaky public speaking abilities always extinguish any fantasies that parents will run up to me, asking for my autograph and rounding off questions about service learning. A few parents, however, did catch me during lunch to say they appreciated my schpiel. I don't say that to brag about myself-- I say it to point out that when parents think something is important, they're going to tell their kids about it.


Now that the entire freshman class knows kind of what service learning is, the next step is to develop the concept among them and tend to our mustard seed of a program.

Above (left to right) incoming  Campbell freshmen pack food bags for Stop Hunger now, prepare backpacks, and seal the bags for Stop Hunger Now. The 500 students packed 20,000 bags and prepared 200 bags of food and 40 backpacks to touch people across town and around the world.