World AIDS Week

 

Interested in helping with registering people for Free HIV Testing? Want to make a piece of art for the Picture AIDS exhibit? Contact projhope@bu.edu for more info.

We hope to see you at one of the week’s events!

 

Looking to Volunteer?

We can hook you up! Here’s how you can get involved in the coming weeks.

• Adopt a Family through Angel Tree
  • Get together with some of your friends, residence hall, club, sorority or fraternity. Adpot a family though the Salvation Army and help make their holidays a little more special by donating items on their holiday wishlist. Email eventscsc@gmail.com.
• Donate Canned Goods in the First Annual Thanksgiving Can-off
  • The CSC has officially challenged the Educational Resource Center and the Orientation Office to a friendly competitive can-off! Donate cans and non-perishables to boxes in any of the three offices (but preferably ours) before November 24th. All donations will go directly to Boston Can Share. Email bucsc@bu.edu.
• Give your books to the Invisible Children book drive
  • Help children in Northern Uganda by donating your books to Invisible Children! Book donation boxes will be in the CSC, Towers and West Campus. Want to see where your books are going? Check out http://www.invisiblechildren.com/bookdrive. Give your books before Tuesday, December 1st.
• Create a piece of art for AIDS activism
  • Draw, paint, photograph or create graphic design that relates to Universal Access, Human Rights or HIV/AIDS by November 24th. Finalists will be displayed in the Howard Thurman Center (in the GSU’s basement) during World AIDS week in December. The top three will be determined by popular vote & will receive prizes. Email pictureAIDS@gmail.com with questions.
• Share your school supplies with under-resourced children
• Donate your gently used school supplies and textbooks to the CSC’s Delta Initiative Supplies Drive by Wednesday, December 17th. All supplies will go to under-resourced children in the Mississippi Delta region who really need it. Your notebooks that still have leftover paper, pens, pencils, markers and textbooks are all welcome. If you’re a math student, we need your old protractors, rulers and calculators. Come drop your supplies off at the CSC, or email bucsc@bu.edu if you’d like someone to come pick it up.

Picture AIDS: Donate your Art to AIDS Activism

During this year’s World AIDS Week (the week of December 1st), Project Hope and the Community Service Center will be organizing an arts competition for AIDS activism. The competition is open to the entire BU community. Get your drawings, photographs, paintings, or graphic design work to the CSC by November 24th to enter!

Artwork should relate to Human Rights, HIV/AIDS and Universal Access in some way.

The finalists will be displayed in the Howard Thurman Center during World AIDS week, where students will be able to vote on their favorite. Prizes will be given to the top 3 finalists!

Want more info? Contact PictureAIDS@gmail.com.

CSC Recognized by BU’s United Way Campaign

Every year around the holidays, Boston University’s faculty and staff are encouraged to give to the United Way. This has always been the University’s charity of choice. But this year, for the first time, faculty and staff were given another option – the Community Service Center. As Peter Fiedler, 2009 Campaign Chair, stated in a letter to faculty and staff:

This year, for the first time, you can choose to designate the Boston University Community Service Center as the recipient of your donation by entering its agency number M857822 when filling out your online pledge. The Boston University Community Service Center is committed to addressing some of the same basic community needs as the United Way, including the education of our youth as well as the essential need for food and shelter. For more information on the Community Service Center, please visit http://www.bu.edu/csc/.

The Community Service Center is proud to be recognized by the University and is excited by this opportunity! The center always welcomes support from BU and the Greater Boston community. Please contact the CSC’s director Lindsey Wyld Kotowicz with questions or for more information on donating to the center.

Invisible Children, and Lots of Emotions

by Maria Gutierrez, MAPP Program Manager

 

After lots of work, Sam and I stood in BU Central, and extremely excited, saw the movie start to play. It is a film that shows high school students that raised thousands of dollars for Invisible Children, who travelled to Uganda and got to meet all of the people that they have helped. It is a very intense and emotional film that touches the heart and soul of every person that sees it.

Invisible Children is a non-profit organization that raises awareness and money to help the north Uganda region that has suffered a long war and has seen more than 30,000 children abducted into the rebel armies. The night included the documentary, “read-arounds” where people wrote their feelings about what they saw, and a Ugandan speaker who is an advocate of the bill that asks the United States government to take action about the Uganda situation to end the suffering of thousands of people.

I believe that our goal for the night was achieved. We didn’t only show people what is happening in Uganda, but we gave them the tools to change and to take actions against those horrible things that are happening. As the three founders of Invisible Children created a global movement, each one of us can change the life of one of those children, and together give them hope and get some of that hope ourselves.

Thanks to all 50 students that came. And let’s keep working on making a difference!

Hunger Awareness Week Updates

Hunger Awareness Week is next week, November 9th-15th!

• There are still a few spots left for Oxfam tabling Monday-Thursday. Contact Shane if you are interested in volunteering.
• Wednesday, Nov. 11th – Boston Rescue Mission - 1 more volunteer needed – 9am-12pm Help prepare and serve food.
• Saturday, Nov. 14th – Haley House - 3 more volunteers needed – 9am-12:30pm - Go to the South End and help out with a park clean-up and help make pies in the Haley House Bakery.
• Saturday, Nov. 14th – Pie Box Party, Community Servings - 3 more volunteers needed – 11:30am – 3pm (appx) – Help with the Pie in the Sky fundraiser and help label and sort pie boxes at the Greater Boston Food Bank and deliver them to pick-up locations around Boston.
• Sunday, Nov. 15th – Bakery Crawl – As many people as we can accommodate!  – 12pm – whenever we’re too full to keep going! We’ll be “supporting those who support SFR” by driving around to all of the bakeries that donate food and tasting all of their delicious goodies! (Lyndell’s, Clear Flour, Flour Bakery, Panera)

Children’s Theatre Dress Rehearsal

by Katie Lannan

When the Thriller dance, peanut butter and Oreo sandwiches and fake southern accents combine on one stage, it can only mean one thing: Children’s Theatre volunteers started going to site this week, after kicking off the program with a dress rehearsal Tuesday evening. The group performed their five original, hilarious skits, giving fellow BU students a taste of the performances that will be on tour at various community centers, hospitals and afterschool programs throughout Boston.

Each play is written and acted entirely by CT volunteers and includes both a moral lesson and a choreographed dance number. The rehearsal’s lucky audience of around 30 students was first entertained by a reminder of the importance of teamwork, as presented by giant cardboard fish. In the second skit, a young boy learns the merits of responsibility after a magical diary lets him swap out his strict parents for a more laid-back pair. The third group stressed imagination in an intergalactic adventure with a French Man in the Moon, alien robots and the shooting star superstar MC Protozoa, while the fourth taught healthy eating habits with a trip to a broccoli forest to save the Dairy Queen. The show concluded with the fifth troupe proving that school really does have something fun for everyone – including jaded Dolly Parton impersonators.

At the end of the dress rehearsal, program manager Matt Donnelly (who had an impressive cameo as Kanye West in one of the skits) encouraged anyone interested in becoming involved in CT to join next semester, as the group is looking to expand in order to meet more need.

What’s New with Afterschool

by Hannah Rabin, Afterschool volunteer

Edison is a middle school located in Brighton. They offer an afterschool homework assistance program called AIM which is where the BU Afterschool volunteers help out. The students are very social and welcoming to all the tutors;  I’ve even already picked up the nickname “Hannah Montana.”

On Wednesday, I was working with a student doing math problems using PEMDAS. After helping him with a set of problems, another student in the classroom asked me to help her with the same worksheet. I insisted that Henry, the student I was originally working with, help her out. They sat together and he worked through each problem with her – clearly showing his mastery of the PEMDAS questions. It was so great to know he really understood it, and could then help out another student. This program is new this semester and I hope it gains popularity – there are so many students there that could use our help. They are so welcoming and friendly and really appreciate every minute that we volunteer! I hope to see more of you there next semester!

Hunger Awareness Week

Hunger Awareness Week is next week, November 9th-15th!

• Monday-Thursday: Myles, Towers, Warren and West dining halls will be hosting Oxfam donation tables 4-8pm. You can donate one of your dining hall meals and the proceeds will go directly to Oxfam. Please donate your meals!
  • Oxfam is still looking for volunteers to help with the meal donation tables. Please email shinde@bu.edu with your availability if you’re interested in signing up for a timeslot, or come up to the CSC to sign up in person! Shifts are just one hour long.
• Wednesday, November 11th: 3 volunteers are needed 9am-12pm to go to Boston Rescue Mission to help prepare and serve meals.
• Saturday, November 14th: 7 volunteers are needed 9am-12:30pm to go to the South End with the Haley House to do a park clean up, and help make pies in the Haley House Bakery.
• Sunday, November 15th: As many volunteers as are interested are needed at noon for a bakery crawl to all of the bakeries that donate food to SFR. The crawl will stop at Clear Flour Bakery, Flour Bakery, Lyndell’s and Panera Bread and will leave from the GSU.

If you have any questions about the above events, contact SFR at sfr@bu.edu. If you are interested in attending one of the events, please email them with your name, email, phone number, and if you are van trained.

UPDATE 11/5 : Another event added to Hunger Awareness Week!

• Saturday, November 14th: Community Servings Pie Box Party, 11:30-3. Volunteers will transport food from the Greater Boston Food Bank and then make food deliveries.

Meet our 2009-2010 ASB Committee Chairs

by Jessica Owen

We asked the Alternative Spring Breaks Committee Chairs why they wanted this position, where their ideal ASB would take them and what they would do when they got there.

Marshall Gillette, Transportation Committee Chair

Hometown: Carlsbad, California

SAR 2010, Human Physiology

“I had an amazing experience as an ASB Coordinator last year and I wanted to get involved again this year in a more profound way because it is my last year at BU.”

Ideal ASB “would take me somewhere in America that I would never think to go otherwise and we would help restore and maintain sustainable ecosystems.”

Quincy Wright, Fundraising Committee Chair

Hometown: Bedford, New Hampshire

COM 2012, Advertising

“I wanted to dive head-first into ASB because I regret not volunteering during my freshman year. I wanted to make up for lost time while simultaneously working on a very exciting year for ASB.”

“I only have a couple of desires for my ideal ASB trip. First, it would have to involve service that truly offers an unobstructed view of the community we visit. Second, we would perform a job that truly made an impact and was extremely appreciated by the organization we work with. Third, we have a crazy amount of fun as a group while doing our service.”

Adam Azahari, Social Events Committee Chair

Hometown: Mahopac, New York

COM 2012, Public Relations

“I wanted to bring some of my experience to help an already amazing program grow even more. ASB and the CSC are both well known at BU and I thought this was the perfect way to get involved with both.”

“My ideal ASB would take my somewhere warm because the early part of BU spring semester is absolutely brutal. After that, I would say that any ASB that makes a great impact on the way we live is ideal.”

Dan Chizzoniti Public Relations and Advertising Committee Chair

Hometown: Long Island, New York

CAS 2010, Psychology

“I was a coordinator last year so I wanted a different experience while still being heavily involved with ASB.”

“My ideal ASB would take place in Sydney, Australia. We would work with an environmental organization to promote the conservation of energy.”

Alisha Cooper, Registration and Database Committee Chair

Hometown: Norwood, Massachusetts

CAS & SED 2011, Math and Math Education

“I knew that I wanted to be involved with ASB this year, and along with being a volunteer on a trip, I thought that helping out behind the scenes would be really fun. When I heard about the new committee positions, I thought it would be great for me to work with ASB for the first time by taking on a position that is also new to ASB.”

“My ideal ASB trip would take me to a school district where the majority of the students are performing well below state standards and are at high risk to drop out or not attend college. Volunteer work would involve tutoring and self-esteem building sessions that remind students that they can take control of their own future.”