On Saturday, Aug. 26, more than 230 Columbus State University volunteers — a group comprised mostly of students but including faculty and staff — took to the community for the university’s 16th annual Day of Service. Busloads of volunteers pitched in at 15 west Georgia and east Alabama community sites in ways ranging from cleaning and organizing, to landscaping and painting. Dr. Melissa Dempsey, director of Student Life & Development, explained that the annual activity helps both students native to or familiar with Columbus, and those new to the area, to gain better insights into how their service benefits our community. “As one of our first university-wide student events each fall, our annual Day of Service strikes such an appropriate tone for both new and returning students,” she said. “In addition to instilling the value of service at such an early stage of the academic year, it — like so many of our other welcome back events — serves as a springboard for getting involved on campus and in the community.”
Cortney Wilson, a Turner College graduate and now director of the William B. Turner Center for Servant Leadership, emphasized the Servant Leadership program operates at the intersection of education and service. “There are a lot of places our students could be on a Saturday morning, but they are here because they understand the value of access to education for all students,” she said, explaining that much of the program’s year-round efforts focus on benefiting the community’s at-risk populations. “Our students are here because they know and understand the benefit their volunteering is going to have on these younger students.” “So many members of the [Columbus] community support our team — this gives us a way of showing them how much we appreciate that support,” said Jillian Bretz (pictured above), a sophomore from Cumming, Georgia, majoring in business and a member of the CSU's women's basketball team. Bretz’s coach, Matt Houser, sees service opportunities — including sorting and repackaging pet food for Paws Humane — as a way of instilling teamwork while teaching his players about more than making plays on the court or shots at the basket. “We all want to incorporate servant leadership into what we do as much as possible. It’s about giving back — we want to pay forward all that is given to us and our team. We want to teach them the importance of serving the community, so they are better people once they leave Columbus State,” he said.
Collectively, university volunteers logged 438 volunteer hours on Saturday. At $29.67 per hour — the current value of volunteer time in Georgia as determined by the nonprofit Independent Sector — their service equated to a single-day monetary impact of more than $12,995 on these nonprofit and educational organizations. This year’s Day of Service was made possible in part by community sponsors including Aramark, CSU’s Barnes & Noble Campus Bookstore, ColorMac, Columbus Water Works and Kinetic Credit Union. It is coordinated by the Office of Student Life & Development, which is part of the university’s Division of Student Affairs.
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