Tufts students volunteered at a number of local charities as part of the University Chaplaincy'sannual Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service event on Jan. 28. The event followed a symposium on Martin Luther King Jr, which was also organized by the Chaplaincy earlier in January.
Students volunteered at the Boston Red Cross Food pantry, the Cambridge Zen Center and the Mystic Learning Center in Somerville.
According to Zachary Cole, program and outreach specialist at the Chaplaincy, the sites were partly selected based on their locations.
“One of the sites is in downtown Boston, one is in Cambridge, one is in Somerville, so we’re really trying to focus on the local community,” he said. “It’s a chance for students to support local community organizations and continue to build relationships with them.”
Cole added that another important factor impacting site selection was a history of collaboration with Tufts students.
“We have been working with sites that our students over the past couple of years have been reaching out to," he said. "We really try to work with communities that we already have an established connection with."
Cole explained that the event was a collaborative effort and was planned by Tufts staff, faculty and students. Staff leaders acted as chaperones to help facilitate reflection throughout the day, he said.
“We wanted students to be thinking about the life and teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and reflecting on some of the systemic pieces of what is happening," Cole said. "[We wanted them] to really pause and think about the work that we’re doing."
Senior Samantha Goldsmith, who volunteered at the Mystic Learning Center, described the activities of the day.
“We played a couple of games with [the kids] and then split off into sports and crafts,” she said. “We helped them make these cute pins with beads and some flower pens with duct tape, which was huge and ridiculous, but it was a lot of fun.”
Senior Michaela Beck, who volunteered at the Boston Red Cross Food Pantry, said that she found the experience meaningful and enjoyable. Her work at the Red Cross included both organizational work and work with guests of the food pantry.
“We spent half the time at the back of the food pantry, packaging up all the food, putting it all together and putting all the produce into bags so they were prepared for the guests,” she said. “For the second part, we were the 'runners,' which basically meant that we were actually welcoming the guests into the food pantry and bringing them around to make sure they got all the food.”
In addition, Beck said she was able to build new relationships with other volunteers.
“I felt like the interactions that we had with each other were also really meaningful in addition to the experience in itself. I got to meet a bunch of new people too,” she said.
This year was the third annual Day of Service hosted by the Chaplaincy, according to a 2016 Daily article. This year's Day of Service had the lowest attendance of any year since its launch, Cole noted, with between 20 and 30 people in attendance.
According to Goldsmith, the event was not widely known throughout the student body.
“I only heard about this through Interfaith because I’m already involved," she said. "I know that my friends who aren’t involved in interfaith groups would have liked to have heard about it earlier."
Beck commended the Chaplaincy on effective advertising through email, postulating that the challenge is in actually motivating students to volunteer.
“I think they did a relatively good job," she said. "It’s sometimes hard to get students to not just see an email but actually act on it."
Goldsmith and Beck said that while more Tufts students were probably interested in volunteering, time constraints likely limited participation.
When asked to comment on Tufts students’ general attitudes toward volunteering, Goldsmith noted that students are sometimes less enthusiastic about volunteering compared to activism.
“We do a lot of activism, which is absolutely fantastic, but when it gets to the micro level of community building and volunteer work, we’re not always as excited because it does take up a lot of time,” she said.
According to Cole, Tufts offers many other volunteering opportunities for students over the course of the semester.
“There’s Leonard Carmichael Society [LCS], which is a service umbrella group here at Tufts that provides a lot of volunteering opportunities," he said. "The Chaplaincy also works really closely with our religious and philosophical student communities that often do a lot of service work."
Goldsmith said that the Day of Service was a meaningful experience for her, and she recommends it and other volunteering experiences to students.
“Even though service opportunities are a tad hidden sometimes at Tufts, they are there, so anyone who is interested should definitely get involved," she said.
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