Student interest growing in community service

MAKING CONNECTIONS: Gina Cincotta, a freshman at Roger Williams University majoring in marine biology, works at Recycle-a-Bike for Community Connections Day. At left is Recycle-A-Bike Program Director Patrick McEvoy. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO
MAKING CONNECTIONS: Gina Cincotta, a freshman at Roger Williams University majoring in marine biology, works at Recycle-a-Bike for Community Connections Day. At left is Recycle-A-Bike Program Director Patrick McEvoy. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO

Community service, a central part of most colleges’ missions, doesn’t always lead directly to internships, but Roger Williams University is finding a growing connection between the two.
Of the 65,000-plus hours of community service completed by Roger Williams students during the 2013-14 academic year, nearly one-third – 21,465 hours – were accomplished through unpaid, nonprofit, government or community-organization-based internships, said K.C. Ferrara, director of the university’s Feinstein Center for Service Learning and Community Engagement.
On Aug. 25, the university hosted its 10th annual Community Connections Day, a major community-service initiative that this year engaged 1,177 students, led by 200 returning faculty, staff and students who serve as site leaders. The Bristol school had students fanning out across the state and southeastern Massachusetts.
“Whenever we meet with these agencies, we tell them about the entire menu of resources they can plug into at the university, so in some ways we look at Community Connections Day like a first date,” Ferrara said.
While there is not a direct connection between the number of freshmen participating in this event, the largest of its kind in the state, and the development of internships, Ferrara said, university administrators are seeing more and more students pursue internships with nonprofits, as well as government and community organizations.
Although the university does not make a “conscious effort to cultivate those relationships” with nonprofits and other organizations, “it’s a pretty organic progression,” she said. “Sometimes an organization will come to us through the Community Connections Day and then we’ll work with them in other ways.
“In general,” she added, “Community Connections Day really helped transform the culture, so students are not scared away from nonprofits. They value nonprofits like they would any other internship location. We explain to them that nonprofits are businesses, and [that] a large part of the community works at nonprofits.” Patrick McEvoy, a program director at Providence nonprofit Recycle-A-Bike, is always looking for volunteers, so when 15 students arrived on Aug. 25 to help with inventory, painting and cleaning, he said he was eager to put them to work.
“It was fantastic,” McEvoy said. “They were broken into groups working on gardening in the parking lot. Another group sanded and stripped poles in the shop space to make them bright orange so they’re visible. A third group helped log what’s available for [an upcoming] sale and create a new system for gathering information off the bikes in the basement – make, model, serial number, color and style.”
An unpaid internship, possibly for credit, could be developed as a result of the new connections being made, McEvoy said.
“I’m thrilled about the idea of this connection because of the 15 students, one or two of them might want to take on the business plan or marketing plan that we need, or back-end tech design, [so] we might further develop internships for that,” he said.
Established as a nonprofit in 2011, Recycle-A-Bike is a young organization and as such is “always on the lookout to expand and deepen what we have, especially when it comes to data collection, involving systems we still have yet to create like digitizing our inventory or having a system to keep tabs on students after they’ve taken a class,” McEvoy explained. “A student intern certainly could help with that.”
Jeffrey Hall, senior director of advancement at Audubon Society of Rhode Island, a nonprofit in Smithfield that is independent of the national society, said his group uses interns from Roger Williams and other universities regularly, though the interns don’t necessarily come from Community Connections Day.
The nonprofit had students pruning overgrown trails in refuge areas on Aug. 25. “We’ve had education interns [from different schools] come in and some of those interns have gone on to work for us in our education program,” he said. “And [three or four] have become staff [members] for us when they graduate. Without them we’d have to turn a lot more programs away.”
At Providence College on Aug. 25 and several days following it, 200 members of the Class of 2018 participated in two types of community-service projects – Urban Action and FaithWorks – in Providence and the surrounding area.
While internships are not necessarily a direct or indirect outcome of Providence College community-service activities, the commitment students make to this type of work reinforces’ the university’s broader commitment, said Sharon Hay.
Hay is director of student activities and involvement leadership for Urban Action, a student-run service club that freshmen students apply for and participate in on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Patrick Walker, 21, a senior at Providence College who came back from freshman participation to work as a student leader and then coordinator, has helped with one project: cleanup and maintenance at Neutaconkanut Hill, a city park that is in the process of being restored by a community group in Providence after it had fallen into disrepair, Walker and Hay said.
While the volunteer work hasn’t led Walker to internships, he said it has provided him with valuable experience.
“For me, it [means] being a member of my community who can plan events and contribute to service,” he said. “I’m looking to go into the nonprofit sector [as a career]. It’s fueled my passion for service and also got me very organized. It’s just what I have a passion for.”
Hay says that regardless of the motivation and long-term outlook, freshmen make the most of their community service.
“They are nothing but enthusiastic, bone-tired from the labor and I get the sense they wouldn’t change a thing,” she said. •

No posts to display