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Boston College undergraduates have come of age in a time of economic turmoil. And with the financial crisis pushing local social services — food pantries and shelters especially — to the limit, students have answered the call through both University-organized and grassroots efforts.
BC students complete more than 375,000 hours of volunteer service throughout the year, according to the Office of Governmental and Community Affairs. Dozens of student-led organizations – including 4Boston, the Sons of St. Patrick and Commonground – also infuse Boston-based nonprofits with intangibles like enthusiasm, idealism and passion in what can be daunting circumstances.
Time and again, student leaders express how service to others has enriched their undergraduate experience.
One of the largest service organizations in the country, 4Boston is comprised of 350 students who commit four hours each week to service at various organizations in Boston. Anne Spencer ’12, a 4Boston Council member and representative to the Pine Street Inn, said that her participation in 4Boston altered the course of her life.
“I first got involved in 4Boston as a freshman because everyone gets involved in service at Boston College,” said Spencer, who is in the BC ROTC Program [see separate story on page X]. “But my experience quickly became a very personal one. I started here as a chemistry major and have actually changed my focus to double major in psychology and sociology because I want to pursue a career in social work.
“Over the past few years I have seen a consistent level of need, in a bad way. There is a high demand for the meals, more on the weeks that bad weather hits,” she said. “It can be emotionally demanding work, but it is also incredibly inspiring.”
Spencer has worked at St. Francis House as well as the Pine Street Inn. She helps cook and serve meals, trains clients on Internet safety, or simply sits in as a partner for one client’s Crazy 8s games.
Summing up her experiences, Spencer recites the thematic quote of 4Boston this year, by Robert F. Kennedy: “It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
“I don’t think that you can go from a safe neighborhood, a great family to a good private high school, to a great private college, to a great career in business and have any sense of the reality of others without experiences like this — experiences that challenge you and ask that you give of yourself,” said Spencer. “However small you think the impact is that you make, it creates a ripple.”
While 4Boston is lauded as one of the most successful service organizations on campus, groups like the Sons of St. Patrick, a society of Catholic men dedicated to fostering a community of virtue, character and faith, have quietly established a grassroots approach to helping the needy in Boston.
Every Friday since 2006, a small group meets in residence hall rooms or at Manresa House to make meals for the less fortunate. Members like David Raminski ’12 and Jonathan Petersen ’12 pack bags with sandwiches, fruit and granola bars, then ride the MBTA D Line to Park Street, stopping along the way to hand out supplies to homeless men and women.
“The program was first started impromptu: A couple of guys sitting around decided they wanted to be more charitable. They grabbed the stuff they had in their dorm rooms and went out to meet people,” said Raminski. “Since then, it’s kept the same spirit. Students provide the food and clothes that we give out to a group of people in need.
“The most important thing is the conversation. In talking with them, you realize that they do not get to talk to people a lot,” said Raminski. “The important thing is going out in the spirit of Christian charity and love to bring conversation to them and meet them where they are.”
Petersen adds: “Normally you walk around the city and not pay any attention to them. But in speaking with them — many who have become our friends — you find that they are very impressive.”
“We’re not trying to solve the person, just be there for them,” said Raminski.
In that same spirit is Commonground, a program to engage students in an interfaith dialogue and provide service to the poor that was founded by Campus Ministry Interfaith Program Director Rev. Howard McLendon, Donald Chang ’12 and Jeff Joseph, a School of Theology and Ministry graduate student. Commonground participants spent the Columbus Day weekend as a time of service and reflection, providing much-needed help at Project Manna, a soup kitchen in Cambridge started by the Mass. Ave. Baptist Church and Temple Emmanuel in Newton.
“Service to the community,” says Rev. McLendon, “is a real opportunity for people of different backgrounds to get to know each other beyond the differences. It proved to be a wonderful opportunity for interfaith discussion.”
Commonground certainly proved to be a transformative experience for Chang, who said his faith has been a subject of much reflection in recent years.
Born Catholic, Chang said he has taken the opportunity at BC to question and study a number of faith traditions – he became involved with BC Hillel, studied Buddhism, and participated in an interfaith dialogue event, where he met Rev. McLendon.
“In many ways, I wanted to find out what religion means. I saw so many other people so passionate about their faiths, I wanted to find out what I really believed and thought I could do that by engaging in a dialogue like this,” said Chang.
“What I came to find out through the service is that by having the common goal – serving those in need — the different faiths came together and we no longer looked at each other in terms of religion,” said Chang. “It was beyond my expectations; an opportunity to learn about others – and myself - in that context.”
Chang said he and other Commonground participants were struck by evidence of the economy’s toll on the larger community. The group met a homeowner who needed to utilize the soup kitchen so he could continue paying his mortgage, and an immigrant couple – both professionals – who were eating at the kitchen so they could save enough money to return to their home country.
“It was unexpected,” said Chang. “It was an experience that really made us focus on the bigger picture.”
Commonground will be held again on the weekend before the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.