Make a Difference Day at Duke University

Make a Difference Day with the Duke Office of Student Community Volunteer Programs here at Duke University was a two site setup coordinated mainly by our fearless VISTA* Neil Hoefs. Neil coordinated with local partners Read Seed and Duke Community Garden for a morning of service in Durham.

At the Duke Community Garden, volunteers gleaned leftover produce for eventual distribution at the Durham Food Bank.

My role in the event was to manage the Read Seed Site on Duke's West Campus. We had a great location in the very heart of the campus quad thanks to the help of fellow sponsor Jenni Davidson with the Sophomore Year Experience. Ian Wolf, fellow Literacy Corps member at Duke, also helped out at the site. We worked with Adelaide from Read Seed to prepare for their annual Read-A-Thon in November. Volunteers helped out by drawing storybook characters and creating "yellow bricks" that will decorate the Read-A-Thon..

Ian working on his character: Thing #1

We had around 10-12 volunteers throughout the morning at our site, and a similar amount at the Garden. It was encouraging to see how passers-by wanted to get involved and were interested to learn more about Make a Difference Day in general. We answered a lot of questions and brought attention to the work Adelaide and Read Seed do here in Durham to bring more books to children. Also, Adelaide was very pleased with our work and seemed sincerely thankful for our service.

Working in pairs, we were able to make 3 or 4 characters for the Read-a-Thon and I believe we signed some people up to volunteer on that date. After that we had pizza and soda at the quad. Overall, it was a good day that encouraged our partners and volunteers.

Make a Difference Day Plans

Hi all,
  Please take a moment to post about your Make a Difference Day plans. What interesting service projects have you come up with? What are some of the challenges you've faced during the planning process? What tips/tricks have you figured out that you could recommend to others?

More on Service-Learning

Hey everyone!

So I spent quite a bit of time thinking and wrestling with how best to incorporate service-learning here at my site. As I mentioned in our seminar, I plan to combine the ABE reading class I'll be teaching with this service-learning project. (Side note, I'm so excited to be getting to teach a small group class, the particular group I'll be working with are five women, four of which are mothers--and they all are higher level readers, close to a 6th or 7th grade reading level, which means they are tantalizingly close to qualifying for the GED.) Anyhow, we're going to reading and working with a lot of cool material that centers around women and race, now and in the 1960s.

I am a bit stuck, when it comes to what we can do as a meaningful service project that would integrate the content used, the literacy that the students are in the process of gaining, and benefit our community...I wonder if any of you all have any ideas. I had been thinking about the class creating materials for future classes (or to be supplemental material for our tutors), but I'm not sure. I'd more than welcome any ideas from you all! Also, I would love to hear more about what you all are planning on doing.

Jenn

September in Durham, NC

(You can click on any of these pictures to get a full-sized image)
During September, the Duke Center for Civic Engagement interviewed almost 130 new Duke students for our America Reads/America Counts program. We had a steady stream of work study and volunteer college kids coming through our office on any given day. My desk, which is out in the open on the floor was constantly surrounded with new tutors signing up for times. It was a fast month.

Because our program is well-known on campus and because we are federally funded, I didn't have to recruit heavily. However, I still put out an e-flier on campus and made an appearance at a volunteer fair that was hosted by my office. That fair, put together by my supervisor and the AmeriCorps*VISTA in our office went really smoothly, drawing hundreds of Duke students and Durham community partners together.

We also hosted several trainings, some for returning tutors, some for our Head Tutors who are small group leaders within the program. Our Head Tutor Training was particularly enjoyable because we began the training at the Scrap Exchange on Foster Street in Durham.

The Scrap Exchange was a great host and the creative exercises helped the Head Tutors to get to know each other better. They also had some tangible manifestations of the work they did together, including one tutor who they dressed as a robot and who remained dressed up for almost the entire training session!

This month, AmeriCorps members participated in the September 11th Day of Service. For our service, we went to the Food Bank of Durham. In the morning shift, our main role was to throw out a ton of moldy bread donations which could not be given away in time before they went bad. This was quite a task and it took about 14 of us to throw away all that waste.

Patrick is the manager at the Food Bank. He gave us our tasks and was very helpful and enthusiastic.

AmeriCorps 9/11 day of service at Durham Food Bank from Pilar Timpane on Vimeo.

NC LiteracyCorps in the news

Our project at the Durham Food Bank on Friday, September 10th was covered by the Durham Herald-Sun. Go to http://www.heraldsun.com/view/full_story/9486355/article-Remembering-9-11?instance=wentz_vicki to read all about it.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service

Monday, January 18th, our group joined R.O.C.T.S. of UNC Chapel Hill in a service project at Christ United Methodist Church in Southern Village. We spent the morning with scores of other volunteers, making no-sew blankets and scarves, stuffing Valentine's treat bags for deployed soldiers, and using scrap felt to make dog and cat toys to raise money for local charities. Here are pictures featuring just a few of our Americorps members volunteering.