By Sean Colvin, Staff writer
The Johnson Center for Civic Engagement hosted its annual SU SERVE event on Saturday, April 22, in which more than 350 students volunteered there time doing community service work in the Selinsgrove area and ten surrounding communities.
SU SERVE is organized each year by the Johnson Center for Student Engagement as part of a month-long service initiative by the university in April.
According to Assistant Director of the JCCE, Pam Frontino, Susquehanna students volunteered over 700-hours of community service on Saturday alone in 29 different locations.
In addition, Susquehanna alumni also donated a number of service hours from service sites in New Jersey and New Hampshire. Frontino said that two students, Noah Diaz-Portalatin and Gabriella Marrero, were instrumental in the organization of this year’s SERVE event.
Marrero, who has served as the Community Partners’ Service Scholar for the JCCE since 2015, was responsible for both maintaining and establishing new connections with businesses and organizations in the community to find sites for students to work at.
Marrero said that this year the office reached out to new partners in the community like the Watsontown Nursing and Rehabilitation Center and the By Grace Woman’s Transitional Home.
“Making those connections with the partners shows that Susquehanna University cares about our community and we are more than willing to donate our time to those organizations,” she said.
Diaz-Portalatin works as the Extracurricular Service Scholar
for the JCCE, where he is responsible for organizing students into teams for their work assignments.
Being that over 300 of the 350 students who signed up were members of Greek organizations, Diaz-Portalatin said that one of his main goals was to split up students in a way that promoted inter-Greek mixing, with some sites having up to five different organizations represented.
Diaz-Portalatin said that one of the goals for next year’s SERVE event is to get more student organizations outside of Greek life involved, like the sports teams, or even teams from first-year residence halls. Also the JCCE would like to be more strategic in sending students to sites that are farther away in a timely manner.
One non-Greek student, Junior Desiree Muldoon, said that lack of communication made it so that she didn’t really understand the event, and did not sign up. She said, “It’s a shame that SU SERVE is not communicated as much to students that aren’t involved in Greek life.” Diaz-Portalatin said that with next years’ initiative, he thinks the event could reasonably draw 400 students next year.
“We are living within the community, so we should show a thank you for letting us occupy space. It’s a good way to give back,” said Diaz-Portalatin, who served this year at the Union City Historical Society.
Junior Maddy Carr, who volunteered at the Community Aid thrift store, said: “They were really glad to have us. It was their customer appreciation day, so it was a really busy day for them. They do a lot of good things for the community, so it was good to help them out.”
Junior Natalie Harris participated in SU SERVE for her first time on Saturday by spending time at the campus gardens on West Sassafras Street, which gives back by donating produce to the Meals for Seals program.
Harris said, “SU SERVE may have only taken up two and a half hours of our day, but the feeling I had throughout and after was definitely rewarding.” She continued, “I look forward to SU SERVE 2018.”
