Ducks @ Oregon - University of Oregon

Non-profit Fair

Katie D.

May 28, 2009 - 7:00 PM

Today there was a volunteering and internships fair at the EMU on campus. Representatives from around Eugene came and set up booths, and students could go and find opportunities in their community.

I love events like this.

It's so exciting to hear about what people are doing in Eugene to improve the community. There is so much activism here, and so many people working to make our home a better place. But it's not just the representatives of the organizations that I find inspiring. I love to go and see that UO students are willing to spend some time to hear about organization and consider spending their precious free time making a difference in their community.

There were a large variety of organizations represented. The organizations I spoke with included:

-FOOD for Lane County: provides food to organizations for free distribution. Their projects include organic gardens, food reclamation from restaurants (including UO cafeterias), a summer lunch program for kids to replace their school lunches, soup kitchen, and repackaging of bulk foods for distribution.

-Shelter Care: a housing program for adults with mental illness
-Eugene Parks and Open Space: volunteer opportunities to maintain and improve Eugene parks, rivers, and open spaces

-IE3: international internships for UO credit

-The Child Center: an education and support program for children with behavioral problems in school.

-SASS: a campus group for women's issues and sexual health
(I somehow don't have the name for these last two)

-A recycling project for electronics to ensure that chemicals are not disposed of incorrectly (they had a statistic that a single cell phone can contaminate 400,000 gallons of drinking water)

-A project to encourage Natural Gardening with pesticide-free areas and protection for farmworkers to avoid exposure to chemicals

There were other groups there as well, including a Peace Corps representative, but they had left by the time I arrived.

Like I said, events like this are so incredibly exciting to me. I took fliers and publications, signed up for email lists, and heard everyone out. I hope to spend some time at several of these organizations over the course of the summer and maybe next year as well. Because of my job (which is never consistent as to specific work hours), I have to be careful committing to a consistent volunteer schedule. I am hoping to return to Volunteers in Medicine for the summer, and will also look into a community garden for Latino families, Huerto de la Familia. For the holes in my summer volunteering schedule, I plan to spend a lot of time at FOOD for Lane County. I would love to work in their gardens, make school lunches for kids, and organize cans. Actually that last one is probably my favorite: there is something incredibly comforting to me in moving canned donations around. For one, it is repetitive motion that I can concentrate on and be competitive about against the clock, which lets me get out of my head a little and focus on a physical motion. For another, it makes me happy to have people's meals passing under my hands. I become part of the chain between people who are willing to donate food to those who need it.

Anyway, if you are looking to fill extra time this summer, I encourage you to look up one of these organizations, or to find another in your hometown to work with this summer. You can gain amazing skills (like gardening!) this way, and know that your time is well-spent in service to your neighbors.