Day of Service is a community service opportunity run by the Office of Service-Learning here at Richard Stockton College. The 9th annual Day of Service was held on Saturday, September 8th this year. They had over 300 volunteers that day, which made it the largest Day of Service in Stockton’s history. The day began with a light breakfast at 8:30am along with some speeches made by various staff and faculty members. Afterwards, we were all divided up by which projects we participated in, which sent people both around Stockton and out into the community.
In registering for the event, the participant has the chance to pick what type of service he/she would prefer to take part in. Later, a service project is chosen for you based on your preferred area of service. I chose to work in something that would benefit the environment and I was placed in the cleanup of Lake Fred. For this project, the participants split up into groups of three or four and picked up garbage and recyclables along the many trails around Lake Fred.
This specific project was partially led by members of Edible, which is an entomology club. They were very knowledgeable of the native flora and fauna. I had a fun time walking through the beautiful Stockton trails and conversing with the Edible members about different types of plant and bug species in the area. We picked up bottles, food wrappers and other pieces of garbage along the way. I was dismayed about the amount of trash that was in the lake or marshy areas that we could not reach. But in reality, we tried our best.
In the end, I am so thankful that I had the opportunity to participate in the day’s events. Not only did I help clean our campus, but also I gained a renewed appreciation for nature itself. Truthfully, the clean up was a good deed, but I feel that I should do more to help. In the future I would like to help the environment on a larger scale although I have yet to figure out how.
I am definitely going to take part in the next Day of Service which is on January 16th 2012 to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The event is a great chance to converse with people of similar interests while doing something to benefit others and I encourage people to attend.