Tingxuan Lu
Caitlin Allan, junior information systems major, and Morgan Davis, senior psychology major, volunteer for Seven Days of service. They prepared boxes for students to pack Wednesday in the Memorial Union for Operation Christmas Child, which donates gifts and useful supplies to children.
Seven Days of Service, with Community Hornets, is putting on a week-long service project that consists of a new event each day, intended to help promote community service and involvement.
“The purpose of it is to show students it’s not difficult to get involved in community service or in your community,” said Brooke Bailey, Community Hornets Coordinator and senior political science and communication major.
A committee, with Katie Ollenburger, junior elementary education major, Bailey and seven other members, began meeting in August to plan specific events. Each committee member was responsible for a certain day of the week and planning that day’s events.
“We’ve done a few of the events in the past,” Bailey said. “We’ve done Operation Christmas Child before, we’ve done Pay it Forward, (and) the Nitty Gritty Tie Dye Run for a weekend event.”
Monday’s event, Home for the Holidays Resort, was a new event for this semester that involved making fall decorations for Holiday Resort, a senior home.
“We’re kind of doing two events this Friday,” Bailey said. “One we’ve done before which is Pay it Forward, but we took a different twist on it this year.”
The Pay it Forward event involves picking up an envelope that has a challenge inside for the participant to complete.
There will be a color packing party on Friday, to help Community Hornets prepare for the Nitty Gritty Tie Dye 5k on Saturday.
Community Hornets and Seven Days of Service are also holding a new event from 2-4 p.m. Sunday at the Emporia Public Library called Buzzing for Books. It’s intended to help promote childhood literacy and it involves games, decorating bookmarks and free books for children.
Everyone who participates in three weekday events and one weekend event has the chance to earn a free Seven Days of Service t-shirt, according to emporia.edu.
“It’s been going really good, I think it’s really awesome to see all of the students that aren’t on the committee still come and get excited,” said Ollenburger.