Student newspaper of Illinois Institute of Technology since 1 928

 

 

By Karl Rybaltowski
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Over 200 students struck out in all directions
from the MTCC on Saturday morning, all with
the goal of volunteering at local institutions in
Bronzeville and Bridgeport and helping the
community For the university’s third annual
Big Event, churches, a nursing home, and even
a settlementehouseestyle community center
hosted HT students who spent part of the day
planting, building, and painting (among sever,
al other types of volunteer activities) as part of
the university’s biggest service learning event
of the year

The Big Event has always started with a search
for local organizations that require volunteers
for bigger projects, and this year was no differ,
ent What was different this year, however, was
an even tighter focus on organizations in the
Bronzeville and Bridgeport neighborhoods
“Our desire was to reach out to organizations

and entities close to campus, so we could give
back , to be a good neighbor, if you will , to
the community in which HT resides," said
Lynne Meyer, Director of the Office of Spiritual
Life and Service Learning This was marked by
a shift to fewer sites, but with many more ac,
tivities to tackle at each spot, and a focus on
community Meyer added, “while we recog
nize the value of things such as park cleanup,
we tried to stay away from that kind of activity,
preferring instead to look for sites where our
volunteers would experience a more personal
connection with the service being performed"

Roughly 100 volunteers went to Benton
House, a community center in Bridgeport that
operates a food pantry, aftereschool programs,
and various youth programs including train,
ing in audio engineering Benton House is in
the middle of a large renovation and expansion
effort, and volunteers were gladly accepted In
this, the Service Learning staff got some help
from other communityerelated efforts on

The BIG Event

TechNews recognizes those who spent their
Saturday making our community a better place

campus “The idea of going across to Benton
House was first put forward by the Interfaith
Youth Core , One Chicago, One Nation Come
munity Ambassadors on campus, Mohini
Lal (from Shimer College) and myself, as our
‘Better Together’ event, a celebration of youth
coming together to make a difference to a lo,
cal social issue disregarding any differences in
faith or religious beliefs," said Utsav Gandhi.
Lal added, “they gardened and cleaned and
painted while talking and laughing and for
some, meeting the community right next door
for the first time" The volunteer effort was part
of a larger interfaith initiative at Benton House
that day, which culminated that evening in a
celebration simply called “The Showcase"
Other sites near campus included First Trina
ity Lutheran Church, Olivet Baptist Church
and the Bronzeville Park Nursing and Living
Center Service Learning has worked with
some of these in the past, but the experience
allowed for a greater understanding of how

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much these institutions do, and a groundwork
for future cooperation “We’ve definitely cre7
ated and built off of relationships with organi
zations from the past year in Service Learning,"
said Becca Waterloo, Service Learning intern,
adding “hopefully we’ve encouraged a lot of
people to get more involved in service or pro,
vided opportunities for those who already are
involved"

The event was followed by Phi Kappa Sig,
ma’s annual Sausage Fest, coordinated to be
part of the day’s events this year It combined
food, games and live music, and was free for
all participants in the Big Event The Skulls
also dedicated proceeds from Sausage Fest to
benefit IPRO 335: Developing Technology to
Transform Education throughout Haitil Orgae
nizers agreed that despite the number of events
and commitments occurring throughout the
month of April, turnout for the Big Event was
strong, and are already looking for ways to
make it bigger in the coming year