ALES students Brianne Mercier and Alanna Fletcher helped sort food donations at Edmonton's Food Bank during Project Serve 2016.
Are you a student who is new to the Faculty of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences? Do you need fast answers to the following?
- How can I make friends here?
- How can I feel less stressed?
- What do I have in common with other students?
The people running this faculty knew you'd have those questions, so they created something fun and easy to help you. It's called Project Serve and it's awesome.
The one-day event on Saturday, Sept. 23, lets ALES students volunteer at one of nine organizations that make Edmonton a better place.
"We designed Project Serve so incoming students can both meet each other and accomplish something important together-all before the month of September is over," said Stan Blade, dean of the faculty.
"Project Serve empowers our students at a time when they face a lot of uncertainty in their new university environment," he says. "By putting in a few hours volunteering in their community, they see the enormous impact that they can have on others, and in their field, literally years before their career starts."
For Project Serve, students choose the volunteer organization that interests them most, although each one has some connection to the programs of study in ALES. This year, the organizations participating are Ronald McDonald House, Prairie Urban Farm, Green & Gold Community Garden, Edmonton's Food Bank, the Edmonton Organic Growers Guild, The ReUse Centre, Whitemud Equine Learning Centre Association, WILDNorth (formerly the Edmonton Wildlife Rescue Society) and iHuman Youth Society.
Ronald McDonald House is where out-of-town families can stay for $10 a night, while their sick or injured children are treated at the University of Alberta's Stollery Children's Hospital or at the Royal Alexandra Hospital. Services offered include free shuttles to the hospitals seven days a week, frozen meals to eat-in or take to the hospital, and creative activities to keep siblings occupied.
On Project Serve day, ALES students will help ensure that the house is a safe and sanitary place by cleaning toys and surfaces and assisting in the kitchen with the baking program.
By keeping the house so clean, volunteers are "actually ensuring that kids are discharged from the hospital faster, because doctors know where they are going and feel comfortable sending them there," said Suzanne Pescod, communications manager for the house.
"It may seem like a mundane task, but getting them to a place they can call home sooner helps with the healing," she said. "We also receive feedback from the families who've been at the hospital and had a difficult day. To see all these volunteers cleaning up, and the love they feel being cared for by strangers really changes their outlook."
Getting a taste of volunteering also introduces ALES students to an excellent method of tackling any of their own issues of confidence that might pop up during a busy school year.
With that first volunteer experience under their belts, many students feel comfortable returning as volunteers for any length of time they have available, certain in the knowledge that their contributions are enormously valuable, said Arthur Warman, team supervisor at Edmonton's Food Bank.
"About 95 per cent of our work is down by volunteers, so they are absolutely essential to everything we do," he said.
With 25,000 people served by the food bank each month, there is always a need for volunteers to sort food donations and pack food hampers, especially on Saturdays, when hundreds of hampers are prepared to be sent to depots around the city in the following week.
"It's a great place to get to know people, and everyone fits in somewhere," said Warman.
Students who volunteer for Project Serve will receive breakfast and lunch, and transportation to the volunteer sites. Sign up online by Sept. 10.