Colgate student volunteer helps Madison Central 4th grader with a craft project.
The Max A. Shacknai COVE advises 39 student-led, community-based volunteer teams. These teams cover a wide range of issues and help students build an abundance of skills. Approximately 700 students representing about 25 percent of the Colgate population participate regularly on a volunteer team. In Fiscal Year ’15, volunteer teams performed more than 24,000 hours of service in the local community.
Service outcomes of ongoing service projects:
- Tutored more than 200 local school children at all grade levels
- Mentored more than 250 school-aged children
- Provided after-school enrichment activities to an additional 125 local children
- Improved academic and social confidence of children tutored and mentored
- Improved SAT scores of 60 local high school students by 100 points on average
- Served more than 1500 individuals at the soup kitchen and food cupboard
- Assisted in responding to more than 450 fire and EMS emergency calls
- Contributed more than 800 hours responding to the Victims of Violence hotline
- Provided care to more than 800 shelter animals
- Contributed to a cohesive, caring community
In addition to regular volunteer service, volunteer teams plan a number of complementary events to increase the work and impact of the team. Here’s a sampling of events volunteer teams planned this year in addition to their ongoing direct service work:
- Fundraiser for Nepal Earthquake Relief
- Take Back the Night March and Speak Out offers a safe and supportive opportunity for sexual violence survivors and the people who love them to publicly affirm their transition from victim to survivor
- On Thursday, April, 16, The Network and Shaw Wellness Center brought the New York Times bestselling memoir writer of Crazy Love, Leslie Morgan Steiner, to present a lecture on domestic violence
- Fundraiser to support a children’s library in northern Thailand
- Blue for Q in support of LGBTQ communities
- Collaboration with men’s basketball team to serve dinner at the Friendship Inn
- Celebration of Service recognized the work of our student volunteers and the community organizations that host them
- Clean Water Coalition coordinated a 5K Run/Walk to benefit the Chenango Canal Association
- Several tutoring and mentoring teams organized field trips for their groups to campus and to local sites providing additional learning opportunities for the children with whom they work
- Oxfam organized an intercultural and multigenerational panel of women to celebrate International Women’s Day
- American Heart Association sponsored a spin-a-thon
- Annual HomeRun 5K and half-marathon fundraiser to benefit the Madison County Habitat for Humanity affiliate
- Organized a team to participate in the annual America’s Greatest Heart Run and Walk in Utica to raise awareness for heart disease
Students participate in a 24-hour spin a thon to raise funds and awareness for heart health.