The 12th annual Day of Service project took place on Saturday, September 12, 2015. All volunteers arrived at 8:00 am and after checking in divided into four teams – Red, Purple, Blue and Green
After being assigned a team we were lead to a complimentary breakfast and then ushered into the Campus Center Event Room, where we sat at tables designated by our group color. The program began with an opening session welcome by President Kesselman & Keynote Speaker Todd Bernstein, both giving speeches to inspire us take action after today in local community service. Afterwards, the groups exited the Event Room and began their activities.
Purple group headed toC134 for an hour long session on Environment, with speakers from ACUA, Water Watch, and Stockton University’s Sustainable Farm. ACUA’s (Atlantic County Utilities Authority) President Richard Dovey, who is a Stockton alumnus (class of 1975), spoke about the history of ACUA and how it helps the community. Water Watch gave a presentation on the hazards of bottled water and how tap water is actually safer for consumption. Last, but certainly not least, one of the volunteers from Stockton University’s Sustainable Farm came up and explained all the ways we could volunteer and help out on the farm, such as working on the solar panel or becoming a bee keeper.
At 10:30 am we headed over to the Campus Center Meeting Room 2 for the Health & Wellness: Prescription Drugs session, which was presented by JTAC. The JTAC’s (Join Together Atlantic County) “mission is to prevent, reduce and/or delay substance use among youth of Atlantic County in a long term and sustainable manner” (Join). We learned that heroin deaths in NJ are more than triple national rate, surpassing homicides, suicides, car accidents and AIDS. One reason that heroin is such a large problem I NJ is because it is very pure and sold very cheap. A police officer was also there, telling us stories of past drug incidents that he has seen over the years and how the officers are trained to use Narcan, a drug that can reverse the effects of opioids, in case someone is experiencing an overdose.
At the end of that session we headed over to the Campus Center Theatre for lunch and our third session, Hunger & Homelessness. After finishing eating volunteers from Covenant House New Jersey, the nation’s largest privately funded agency serving homeless, runaway & at-risk youth, came on stage and gave a presentation. The volunteers explained how they provide food, shelter, immediate crisis care and an array of other important services to homeless, runaway and trafficked youth between the ages of 18 to 21. The next speaker, however, brought a pleasant change of pace. Books Without Borders, an organization that collects and donates books to libraries, had the teams participate in a service project of packing and loading books into a van to be placed in a storage container for later distribution. Doing hands-on work was a lot of fun, even when it started raining, and I ended up remaining to assist instead of going to the fourth session.
Around 3:00 pm all of the groups met up again in the Campus Center Event Room were we had a quick reflection session and got free t-shirts to commemorate the day. I had a lot of fun at my first Day of Service and now I feel more aware of what service opportunities are available around me. I can’t wait for next years!