Meet Timothy Reynolds! He is a Student Alumni Board Homecoming Volunteer Chair, Rock Camp mentor, Student Orientation Mentor, Arkansas Boys State Junior Counselor, and is also involved with S.T.O.R.E, and Student Support Services. He enjoys staying up to date with the latest trends and pop culture and photo-shopping. Timothy’s most memorable U of A experience is being able to get on the football field during the homecoming game.
Chances are your student’s schedule is already pretty tight as a college student, but taking a few hours out of their week to volunteer can not only allow them the chance to do good, it can change their life and help their future career. Here at the University of Arkansas we have the Volunteer Action Center (VAC) where your student can volunteer, learn to work as part of a team, build their resume, network with fellow colleagues, and to gain a perspective of the difference they’d make in the community. On our campus, there are many ways to volunteer through the volunteer action center. For example Dream B.I.G, Razorback Food Programs, the VAC literacy program, and Give Pulse are some of the most popular volunteer organizations that students join! By volunteering, one student can truly make a difference- and that person could be your student!
To begin with, there’s a significantly large population of female students on campus who are proud to say they’re involved with Dream B.I.G. Dream B.I.G. (Believing in Girls) is a student-led girl empowerment mentoring initiative that started out serving 6th-12th grade girls from the Marvell-Elaine School District of Phillips County in the Arkansas Delta. University of Arkansas students can serve as Interns, Student Coordinators, and Mentors to engage with the high population of teenage girls living in a community that has seen an increase in gang violence, and a decrease in the will to pursue a higher education for various reasons.
Another popular program among students here is the VAC literacy program. The goal of the VAC Literacy Program is to foster a love of reading and to improve literacy among grade school students. University of Arkansas volunteers commit to one semester of reading with an elementary student for 90 minutes a week Monday through Thursday. The program takes place at 4 local elementary schools. Students often say that going to read to younger students is the highlight of their day!
If your student isn’t an outgoing person, which is ok, they should probably check out the food programs. There’s the full circle food pantry and the razorback food recovery. The Full Circle Food Pantry was founded in 2011 by a group of students who became aware of their peers’ struggles with hunger. The Pantry has grown from serving 12 people in its first month of operation to serving an average of 200 students, staff, faculty and their households each week. In comparison to the full circle food pantry, razorback food recovery focuses on retrieving food rather than distributing it. It is estimated that colleges throw away 22 millions pounds of extra food every year. The purpose of Food Recovery is to recover this extra, wholesome food that would otherwise be wasted and donate it to hungry people.
Last, but not least, and the most crucial aspect to the Volunteer Action Center is Give Pulse. GivePulse is a university-wide platform that is used for finding volunteer opportunities in the community and recording what type of impact you are having on this community. Its mission is to enable everyone in the world to engage and be active in the community. It does so by providing resources and a platform to make it easy to find and give to those causes that you care most about. There’s something for everyone on GivePulse.
There are endless volunteer opportunities for your student to get involved in on campus. The work you do will be rewarding and beneficial to segments of the population and areas of the community that need volunteers to thrive.