By Lane Smith
From selling pancakes for poverty to promoting hunger and
homelessness awareness, many University and community groups are trying
to do their part as the holiday season begins. Thanksgiving has been
the focus of several volunteer projects in the area, despite the
difficulties of recruiting volunteers.
“Everyone at the beginning
of the semester wants to volunteer, but as the semester goes on and
everyone gets busy, they don’t know what kind of time they have,” said
Alefiyah Master, director of Hunger and Homelessness and a senior in
ACES.
“People want to volunteer during the holidays, but they
have the wrong impression that food banks and pantries and shelters
need more help during the holidays. People who are hungry during the
holidays are hungry all the time.”
The University’s Office of
Volunteer Programs (OVP) ran its second annual Thanksgiving Basket
Drive through Nov. 18. The drive reached out to all Registered Student
Organizations (RSOs), University Housing and Greek organizations. It
asked the groups to gather the food components of a Thanksgiving meal
into a laundry basket and to bring it to the OVP office.
“One
of the biggest things that OVP does is to help students find volunteer
opportunities that fit with their schedules, with their interests,”
said Brittany Koteles, junior in LAS. “We exist to make it easy to
volunteer. In addition to that, we do some campuswide service projects
and one of them is this Thanksgiving Basket Drive.”
On Wednesday
and Thursday, community groups picked up the baskets to deliver them to
families in the area. Five organizations worked with OVP to distribute
the baskets for Thanksgiving: Salt and Light Ministry, Crisis Nursery,
the Pavilion Foundation, the Champaign Mental Health Center and a
community church.
“We have the resources to get all the stuff
together, but we don’t have the contact with families that they (the
groups) do,” Koteles said. “I really like that we’re partnering with
organizations in the community and extending service beyond the campus.”
About 60 baskets were collected through the drive. OVP is also running a toy drive through Dec. 9.
RSOs are working to help the community as well.
Volunteer Illini Projects donated 10 baskets to the OVP Thanksgiving Basket Drive. The group also promoted hunger awareness.
“This
week is National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week, so we had
other things going on like a hunger display on the Quad,” Master said.
The group is also volunteering for Urbana High School’s 38th Annual Thanksgiving Meal, which provides meals for the community.
The
meal takes place on Thanksgiving, Nov. 26, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the
High School Commons, 1002 S. Race St., in Urbana. In previous years,
the event has typically drawn around 300 members of the community, said
Mark Schultz, an Urbana school district spokesperson.
“This is an
opportunity for many of the foreign students in the area to come and
participate in a Thanksgiving meal,” Schultz said. “A lot of times the
foreign students don’t have the opportunity to return to their family
for the holidays, so it’s a chance a time for them to come to Urbana
High School to enjoy the day.”
