SAGE and community service

[abby jean]

Hello lovely second years!

This year, SAGE is focusing on a special project to encourage and support community service and volunteering among the SoE PhD students. When we talked to the first year students about this during orientation, we emphasized that participation in community service can help people feel connected to the community, see some direct and immediate results of their effort, and ensure that their entire lives aren't swallowed by SoE commitments. Perhaps some of these benefits also apply to you!

When talking to the first years, I encouraged them to take a very broad view of community service relevant to education. Most people immediately think of tutoring or service to a local school, but I also argued that a lot of other community service possibilities are relevant, including:

• volunteering in a food bank and working with families living in poverty 
  
• working at a homeless shelter for kids and young adults
• helping with community gardens or maintaining open green space in the area
• emergency response teams or crime victim's advocacy
• pretty much anything connected to the local community!

All of the incoming first year cohort committed to perform 15 hours of community service each semester, or 1 hour per week of the semester. We would like to ask you to make the same commitment.

In order to assist, encourage, and support people pursuing community service work, SAGE will be holding a lunch on 9/12 to discuss community service work and, with the help of CU's Volunteer Resource Center, help connect people to individual service opportunities and organize group service outings on weekends.

We're also asking each cohort to identify a community service coordinator for the cohort to help keep track of cohort hours, ideas for opportunities, etc. We expect this to be a very low time commitment. If you're interested in being that person, please contact me at abby.mc...@colorado.edu or at sage....@gmail.com. Please also email with any questions, concerns, etc, about this effort.

Thanks, and we look forward to working with you on this project!

abby.