Volunteering out of the bubble

Sophomore Kei Kurosu with a friend from her mission trip to Haiti (Photo courtesy of Kei Kurosu)
UNC students rethink service:
Redefining how we volunteer

Crouched behind a bush waiting for the boy whose language she did not speak, Kei Kurosu smiled.

She was playing tag. In Haiti.

Kurosu said her experiences traveling to Haiti have made her rethink her definition of volunteering.

“Sometimes it’s not labeled ‘mission work’,” she said, “but I think you can serve wherever you are.”

Sarah Smith, the student services coordinator with the Carolina Center for Public Service, said that she believes more students are changing their mindset like Kurosu.

One of the center’s most popular programs, Buckley Public Service Scholars, has seen a dramatic increase recently in its graduates.

To graduate from the program, students must complete 300 hours of public service, which can be anything from Habitat for Humanity to voter registration drives to clerical work for a nonprofit organization. In addition, they must assemble a senior portfolio, attend at least four skills training sessions and take at least one APPLES (service learning) course.

Though around 1800 students are enrolled in the program, last year only about 190 completed the requirements by graduation. This year, 290 graduates are Buckley Public Service Scholars, the biggest jump the program has ever had, Smith said.

That is not to say, however, that they haven’t been serving all along.

“Volunteerism is something that’s engrained in the students at Carolina,” Smith said. “It’s a culture of service. But it’s becoming more visible, more apparent.”

Getting started

            A daunting task faces any UNC student who wants to make a difference: With all the opportunities available to serve, where do we start?

Kurosu first felt a connection with Haiti during a freshmen seminar about the country entitled “Mountains Beyond Mountains: Infectious Disease in the Developing World.”

When she discovered that professor would be going on a mission trip with University Presbyterian Church to Haiti, she said, she had no doubt this was where she would spend her spring break.

“If I hadn’t taken the class,” she said, “I would have thought, ‘I don’t want to go to Haiti’.”

Now a sophomore, Kurosu spent this year’s spring break in Haiti, too. She plans to return with her home church in September. She even wants to live there one day.

A friend who went on the same mission trip as Kurosu for the first time this year, Logan Smeallie, said he decided to go to Haiti because he loves traveling and working with children.

Smeallie, who tutors at McDougle Middle School through Blue Ribbon Mentoring, said he would advise students looking for service opportunities to choose based on what they want to do.

“I think people are more effective when they do something that they like,” he said. “I just like tutoring and I like the interaction with the students.”

Jagir Patel, Co-President of the Campus Y, gave similar advice. He said that students overwhelmed by the immense amount of service resources at UNC should explore the Campus Y’s website and contact the leader of the committee that most interests them.

“More likely than not, the Campus Y has a space for you to find what you want to do,” he said. “If not, there are mechanisms to bring it about.”

Smith agreed that, though the first step towards volunteering may be the most daunting, it is also the most important.

“Try several things and take advantage of unique opportunities,” she said.

“You may like it. You may hate it. But at least you tried it.”

Volunteerism off-campus
(Information courtesy of Sarah Smith)

Most popular organizations in ’10-’11:
UNC Hospitals
American Cancer Society
American Red Cross
Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools
Habitat for Humanity

Resources to get started:

•  Enroll in an APPLES course (see next sidebar)
•  Enroll in the Buckley Public Service Scholars Program
•  Visit the Campus Y’s website
•  Find a group that interests you at FallFest

Branching Out

When it comes to volunteering, more and more students are stepping out of the bubble.

Kurosu said that even though she did not know many people on her first trip to Haiti, she felt comfortable.

“There were no boundaries,” she said. “Our interactions were just free. Regardless of the language barrier, it was just like, you’re my friend.”

Patel said he thinks there is an increase in the amount of students doing global public service.

One reason for this, Smith speculated, is that technology is making students more globally-minded, as students use social media to obtain and share information about global issues. She also said technology has helped increase access to service opportunities even since she graduated from UNC in 2010.

“The information is more readily available,” she said. “Now you have it on your phone. It’s literally in your pocket, and there is a constant growth in that direction.”

Even before the iPhone was popular, UNC was hardly at a loss for service opportunities for students. Every year since 2008, UNC has made the President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll list. In 2009, it was one of six “Presidential Awardees.”

Patel believes that a major reason for UNC distinguishing itself as a school of service is that the students are unafraid to go out into the communities they are serving.

“In the years I’ve been involved, I’ve seen an increase in engagement with communities that are discriminated against,” he said. “There has been an increase in community partnership because you can’t do activist work without engaging the community.”

Patel agreed with Smith that accessibility plays a major role in the thriving service community at UNC, though he also pointed out the physical accessibility to Chapel Hill communities from campus.

“Being dependent upon public transportation is not the most efficient way of doing work,” he said, “but it’s easy to take the bus. There are local communities that need justice, too. It’s kind of in your backyard.”

APPLES Service Learning Courses:

“We’ve seen a pretty significant increase in the last few years,” said Director of Service-Learning and Student Programs Leslie Parsons of APPLES courses, which allow students to learn from a UNC professor while serving through a local community partner.

Parsons believes there has been a distinct thrust behind concern for domestic issues.
“We can’t keep up with the demand,” she said.

APPLES at a glance:

•  Established July 2009
•  2500 students each year
•  40-60 courses per semester
• Fulfills “Experiential Education” requirement

GO!

In response to the overwhelming amount of students who are now choosing to go abroad to volunteer, several campus organizations have partnered to sponsor a yearly conference called “GO! Global Orientation on Culture and Ethics.” 

Each April, the Carolina Center for Public Service, along with the Campus Y and the Center for Global Initiatives, sponsor the program, which prepares students who are traveling abroad for service, research or academic opportunities to respect the cultures with which they will be engaging.

This year’s slogan was “I will not save the world.” The event was April 14 at the FedEx Global Education Center.

“We are all in the same boat in that we want to be respected for who we are. This is not different around the world,” Director of the Parr Center for Ethics Jan Boxhill told attendees. Throughout the day, students explored the theme of respecting the culture of the communities they will be serving.

Attendees will be going all over the world: to South Korea, India and Belize, to name a few. Some students will be creating documentaries, some will be working in health clinics or on farms and others will be doing field research.

More than 100 students attended. Throughout the program they gathered in large and small groups to discuss their fears and anticipations about their travels. At lunch they were given the opportunity to meet natives of their destination countries.

“Try to really understand what the strengths of the community are and focus on these strengths,” said Jimmy-Jean Baptiste, who assisted with the group discussion on the ethics of photography in global contexts. Baptiste is a graduate student in UNC’s Department of Health Behavior.

“We’re not necessarily going to try to ‘save’ people,” he said. “We should remember they have agency.”

A new definition

            Though Kurosu did not attend GO!, she said there were times when Haiti’s culture surprised and even shocked her.

            “I wasn’t prepared to see all the things that I saw,” she said, describing a dilapidated cathedral with so much rubble that there was no straight path to walk through it.

            The group worked with the Comprehensive Development Project, sponsored by the non-profit Haiti Fund, Inc.

            The director of the compound the students visited, Ingram Caswell, encouraged them to take Haitian culture into account when they were serving.

            On the first day, the group was assigned to paint a house. Even though the task could be completed in an hour, Caswell told the students, she wanted it to take five hours and wanted the students to spend time engaging with the residents. Kurosu said she believes this is because of Haiti’s strong sense of community.

            Both Kurosu and Smeallie stressed how much more generous the culture of Haiti is.

“Everyone I met was so hopeful. It makes me wanna live my life in that way,” Kurosu said.

Smeallie described the scene of a car accident. He said dozens of people stopped to make sure the victims were all right and to provide assistance.

“It’s not like every person is a saint, but the culture is more based on family and community,” he said. “They have a broader sense of community than we do here.”

Both said that visiting a country with a vastly different definition of service from America’s changed their perspective.

“I saw a greater sense of generosity there than I do here,” Smeallie said while describing how the owners of a modest home in a village they visited slept outside on the ground so the adult leaders of their group would have somewhere to sleep.

“That is hospitality to the maximum,” Kurosu said. “They are so selfless.”

“That’s an attitude that I wish I had more consistently,” Smeallie said, “and I wish more people had at all.” 

"Busburrying"

It's Monday morning, and way too cold to be walking anywhere, so I hop on the CM after dropping off my car.

The elderly woman across from me clutches her purse and sits forward as if worried the back of the seat is carrying some sort of disease.

"Excuse me," she catches me glancing at her, "how do you request a stop?"

I hold back a giggle and tell her you have to push the yellow strip.

A year ago I would not have found her so funny. A year ago, I was her.

The number one thing I wish someone had told me when I first came to UNC?

Take the bus.

You know it's cool if Will Smith does it.

Sometimes, you just have to get away. That's not always easy when you don't have a car. But you'd be surprised how easy it is to get somewhere from UNC by giving the bus a try.

I'd never ridden a public bus before college. The first time I went to the grocery store, I didn't even know that you had to request a stop by pressing the yellow strip or the bus would keep going.

What's more embarrassing, I didn't know nextbus.com existed. I just guessed. And I often guessed wrong.

I have a car here now, but I've learned the value of riding the bus nonetheless. And I'm not talking about taking the P2P on a Friday night.

One of the many reasons to take the bus

Earlier this semester, I did something uncharacteristically spontaneous: I walked to a random bus stop and took the first bus that came by. I was going to kill two birds with one stone, doing some reading while figuring out my way around Chapel Hill.

Unfortunately, that was the D route, which lasts about an hour and a half. When my friends asked where I'd been, I told them I was "busburrying" (Not many of them got the Oscar Wilde reference).

It quickly became a habit to disappear and come back hours later with work done and a new perspective about all the things to do in Chapel Hill. Along any given bus line, there are grocery stores, banks and bookshops.

You don't have to bum a ride to see Chapel Hill, but you do have to get out of the bubble and onto the bus.

Just don't forget to press the yellow strip.

LA's bus tips

1.   Decoding the letters

The D goes east, towards "D"urham

Anything with C will go west, towards "C"arrboro. The CW will take you to "W"eaver Street Market

The F just goes back and forth on "F"ranklin

The NU and NS go "n"orth on Martin Luther King. (While you're up there give Foster's Market a try.)

"X" means express (few stops)

The J bus goes to Jones Ferry Park-and-Ride, which is in Carrboro.

2.   Other tips:

Always bring your phone in case the bus breaks down or you get lost.

Try different buses. You might find a faster route or a cool new place.

Talk to people. You might make friends!