A Busy Fall on Campus

The past few weeks have gone into high gear at UMass Boston and with MACC. So I thought I would write some about two of my favorite events that have occurred so far, both of which are annual events that I was to organize and lead. The first project was Good Neighbor Day, which occurs in the fall and spring. Good Neighbor Day at UMass Boston usually consists of a single event the premise of which is to get students involved in the local community. This year Sherrod, the Director of our office, and I had the idea of doing onesie and bib decorating for an organization known as Dorchester Cares , which provides gift baskets to new mothers in Dorchester. We found this a fitting event as UMass Boston is a part of this community and we want UMass Boston to become more recognized as a participant and activist within Dorchester. We set up during the day outside of the Campus Center, and found curious students lining up to decorate onesies and bibs. It was a great event because it was a little bit outside of the box and repainted students ideas about service can be.

Then I was put in charge of organizing the UMass Boston Volunteer Fair. I started almost from square one for this event, although I had some pictures from past fairs and a few intake forms to look over that had been submitted by organizations who participated in the past. I was unsure about how to run a volunteer fair, but this was a project I just had to dive right into. We booked space to hold the fair a month and half in advance and decided to order lunch for those who would come out to our campus. I knew of many community partners in the Boston area, as I had done a lot of work setting up volunteer trips as an undergraduate student so I knew I would want to invite them to our fair. In order to find groups to come, I decided to contact the community organizations whom I saw in pictures of prior fairs and I also decided to look to community partners I worked with as an undergraduate student, because keeping those connections alive was very important to me. So the first step to making the fair a success was for me to get in contact with these folks and invite them to our fair. I began advertising, and started to be contacted by more and more groups. UMass Boston is known for its community engagement, but many of the groups I contacted, or who contacted me had never been to UMass B to recruit for volunteers, so it was a new community they were excited to engage with in conversation in the hopes of attaining more volunteers for their projects. Response was slow, but before I knew it I had upped our table count to 40 and was expecting at least 38 different organizations at the fair. I hung posters, sent out emails, and waited for the day to arrive while busily organizing the last minute details of parking passes, lunch, and transit. Then the fair arrived, and students flocked to the fair, all of the groups who came walked away willing to participate, and had a full stomach from lunch. Now because of the success of the Fall Volunteer Fair, we will have one in the spring as well!