More than 500 volunteers, including members of greek organizations, quickly completed tasks for non-profit partners during Make a Difference Day.
Brooke Sperbeck
[follow id=”BrookeSperbeck7″]
Members of Cal Poly and the San Luis Obispo community volunteered at various non-profit agencies as part of the nationally-recognized Make a Difference Day, on Saturday.
“Make a Difference Day is actually a national day of service,” said Tyler Parthemer, AmeriCorps VIP Coordinator at the Cal Poly Center for Community Engagement. “The projects that we host as Cal Poly are our local projects, our local participation for San Luis Obispo County to participate in this larger, national day of service.”
This year’s Make a Difference Day had 525 volunteers and served approximately 30 community partners, with some of those agencies hosting multiple work sites of volunteers, Parthemer said. Non-profit agencies that were served included Growing Grounds, Housing Authority of San Luis Obispo and One Cool Earth, she said.
“There’s probably 35 different sites where volunteer groups will be participating, from Paso Robles all the way down to Guadalupe,” Parthemer said.
According to Parthemer, who planned the event, volunteers signed up as both individuals and groups. The majority of volunteers signed up as groups, including 16 Cal Poly sororities and fraternities.
After checking in at Chumash Auditorium and getting breakfast and T-shirts, the volunteers received their community service assignments. Then they went to various service sites from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., depending on how much work the agency needed help with.
“I think that for the community and for the non-profit partners that we work with, this is a huge day and a huge opportunity for them to get a lot of projects done that they don’t normally have the time or the recourses to achieve without such a huge volunteer pool,” Parthemer said.
Hannah Wilson, an agricultural business junior and philanthropy assistant for Alpha Omicron Pi, said her sorority had 10 girls volunteer Saturday at the Maxine Lewis Memorial Shelter.
“We’re doing everything from washing windows to pulling weeds,” Wilson said. “It’s more outdoors stuff, just to keep the place in good condition, and make it be a good place for the homeless to come to.”
Though there were lots of other events Saturday, including parents’ weekend, Wilson said she made sacrifices to volunteer at Make a Difference Day. To her, philanthropy is one of the most “rewarding and fulfilling” parts of being in her sorority.
“We want to help out everybody in the San Luis Obispo community, and we like to work with other greek houses making good things happen, so that’s why were out here today,” she said.
Alpha Phi also participated in Make a Difference Day, something they have done every year, Maddy Cimino, political science junior and Alpha Phi director of community service, said. Her sorority had 25 girls volunteer at Trilogy, an assisted living community in Nipomo.
“It ended up being kind of confusing because we were supposed to serve at the Trilogy center in Nipomo, but when we got there they had thought that Make a Difference Day was Sunday the 27th,” she said.
Although the girls weren’t able to help with their original project — setting up for a non-profit event — they made the best of the situation and helped Trilogy prepare the building for its Halloween party.
“We put up decorations everywhere and set up tables, and they were so thankful that we were easygoing about it, but it was very confusing at first,” Cimino said.
Alpha Phi’s volunteer work on Make a Difference Day was one of the three community service events the sorority does each month, Cimino said. Because greek organizations put a lot of emphasis on their national organizations’ philanthropies, local agencies can sometimes be overlooked. Cimino said her position, director of community service, was established this year to increase Cal Poly Alpha Phi’s volunteer presence locally.
“Community service is a huge focus to us this year, as well as doing our philanthropy work, because we want Alpha Phi to have a good name in the community,” Cimino said.
Tau Kappa Epsilon, though not officially registered to partipcate in Make a Difference Day, organized their own philanthropy event on Saturday to recognize the national day of service, according to Matt Cohen, an economics senior and philanthropy co-chair.
The fraternity had 35 members serve at the Prado Day Center, serving food and cleaning the grounds of the shelter, Cohen said. His fraternity plans on going back to Prado in the future, after seeing how big of an impact they made in the short time they were there on Saturday.
“Today, we got such a great turnout, we’ll probably only be here for a couple of hours, like two,” Cohen said. “We were planning on four initially. But we are going to want to come back out for sure, especially with how effective we were. We did everything they usually have to do in a whole day in two hours.”
The efforts made by these fraternities and sororities help strengthen “mutually beneficial” relationships between Cal Poly and the non-profit partners, Parthemer said.
“Especially with some of the fraternities and sororities, these non-profits, they’re maybe working with these groups for the first time, so really getting to see that these groups are made up of individuals who really care about making a difference in the San Luis Obispo community,” she said.
Though there was an influx of volunteers on Make a Difference Day, with more volunteers than requested by partner agencies, Parthemer said it’s important for everyone to remember that service is needed year round. There are many populations that need ongoing attention and assistance outside the Cal Poly “bubble,” she said.
“If this is something that they connect to or something that they really love to do, hopefully we encourage them to go back and continue volunteering with this agency beyond Make a Difference Day,” she said.