On Saturday, about 1,600 people volunteered for the 16th annual Service Raleigh, a citywide day of community service.
Service Raleigh is a time to work with and meet other students and to give back to the community, according to Dylan Cawthorne, a senior in environmental engineering and one of the organizers for the event.
“I really like interacting with people in a service setting that I normally wouldn’t, like my group, Engineers Without Borders, was paired with a sorority group,” Cawthorne said. “Interacting with those people in that way was something that I never would have done and it was a very valuable experience.”
Morgan Westbrook, a sophomore in civil engineering, saw Service Raleigh as a social event as well as a service project, which attracted her to come back and volunteer for a second year.
“[Last year] we only had five people, we got to have a lot of fun and bond with it,” Westbrook said.
Her group, Student United Way, was small this year as well and was looking forward to a getting to know each other.
The effect Service Raleigh had on N.C. State attracted Meera Venkataraman, a senior in statistics, to help lead the event as co-chair.
“It’s a really great way for people who haven’t been that involved with service as much before to get involved with their community,” Venkataraman said. “It is definitely one of N.C. State’s biggest traditions.”
Tradition is what made Paul Charron, a senior in biological engineering, come out to Service Raleigh with his fraternity, Phi Sigma Pi.
“We try to do a few volunteer projects every semester and Service Raleigh has been one of them for a couple years,” Charron said.
Tsekai English, a senior in mathematics, volunteered for her fourth year with the Society of African American Physical and Mathematical Scientists.
“It’s something that my organization does every year, so we kept with tradition,” English said.
Though many volunteers had participated before, Spechel Wooten, a junior in criminology and community service chair for National Society of Leadership and Success, was looking forward to her first Service Raleigh after hearing a lot about it.
“I am excited to be doing it because it is my first year and I’ve always heard it was a great experience,” Wooten said.
Service Raleigh offers various types of projects for the volunteers -— everything from outdoor landscaping to indoor tutoring with children from area Boys and Girls Club.
“I liked how diverse all the different service projects were, like some people were doing things outdoors, some people were inside,” Alex Johnson, a freshman in chemical engineering, said. “You never knew what you would end up doing and that was exciting.”
Johnson mulched and turned soil at the Ellen Mordecai Gardens downtown.
Other projects were riding bikes around campus cleaning up and planting trees with Trees Across Raleigh, one of Service Raleigh’s partners.
Service Raleigh is open to more than just N.C. State students, which was something that interested Cawthorne.
“I liked seeing a cool organization outside of N.C. State and helping them and learning what they have to offer,” Cawthorne said.
Outside of the University involvement was a huge push by Service Raleigh organizers for the last couple of years, according to Venkataraman.
“More people in the community know about it, rather than just N.C. State students,” Venkataraman said. “That’s what we wanted, to have that connection between N.C. State and the community.”