Public service organizations provided information to students during the Volunteer Fair on Tuesday by setting up booths in Plaza Vaquero and encouraging students to take the initiative in contributing time to help the community.
By joining volunteer groups, students can interact with their community, develop social skills, and gain satisfaction from their time and effort.
Besides gaining personal satisfaction, students can use volunteer work on college applications and build their resumes to enhance further employment opportunities.
The volunteer organizations that visited campus included “Learning for Life/Exploring Division,” which sends volunteer students and adults to read books to elementary school children. During the months of October, November, and December VNA Care, sponsors flu clinics at public locations such as K-Mart, Longs Drugs, other businesses, and churches. Volunteer students in this program help the clinics with filling out paperwork.
The Glendale Adventist Medical Center has also organized volunteer services for patient care and other hospital services. At the fair, the center promoted the United Nations’ International Year of the Volunteer, which advocates people working toward being “partners in civilization” by offering support to those in need.
Project Achieve is a volunteer agency targeted at aiding the Glendale community by “breaking the cycle of homelessness” through street outreach, substance abuse recovery and veteran services. This agency also has a program called the Guest Chef, in which volunteers purchase, prepare and serve meals on a weekly or monthly basis to 40 people. Catholic Charities Glendale Community Center is involved with volunteering for a variety of services, such as tutoring, teaching computer skills, coaching after-school and weekend sports programs and bookkeeping.
Glendale College provides volunteer work through the Service Learning Center. This includes volunteer work with 200 non-profit agencies, which offers extra credit work for classes such as sociology, Child Development, psychology, history, and ESL. The center also pays tutors in the GEAR UP program, which helps sixth and seventh grade students in math and English.
In addition to working with the Service Learning Center, students also have the option of joining the Associated Students at Glendale College. This program exposes students to leadership and organization skills, teamwork, and self-improvement through running for elective office.