An army of 5,000 college freshman dressed in blue tee shirts boarded 100 buses on their first day at UCLA, fanning out across Los Angeles to 26 worksites, the biggest, one-day volunteer campaign any school has ever mustered.
“It’s the most incredible outpouring of volunteerism I’ve ever seen,” said a senior on the beach, where a chean-up was underway. “I have more faith in youth than I ever did.”
Helping to accomplish this task will be 800 members of the UCLA family — including staff, faculty and alumni — led by Chancellor Gene Block, whose vision it was to create a UCLA “community of heroes” who will continue their good deeds well beyond their time on campus.
(Photo from UCLA Volunteer Center’s Flickr photostream)
UCLA Volunteer Day will see 1,000 new students transported by bus to Griffith Park for trail repair, 1,000 to Point Dume in Malibu for beach clean-up, 500 to the Veterans Affairs hospital and cemetery in West Los Angeles for gardening and other assistance, and 500 to each of five Los Angeles Unified School District campuses for painting and other clean-up projects.
The day before the event, the campus launched the UCLA Volunteer Center, an online gateway for civic participation. The UCLA Volunteer Center is being funded by a $250,000 grant from the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF). Hollywood’s leading charity, EIF has launched a multiyear campaign called “iParticipate” to inspire action and promote a new way of thinking about service. The campaign will include an unprecedented, weeklong television event that begins Oct. 19 and involves ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC and other broadcast networks.
Watch the video below, or read the CBS News story…