Carleton students spent their Saturday volunteering with 15 community organizations Sept. 18 as part of the annual Carleton Serves event, organized by the Student Experience Office.
One of these organizations was the Alternative Learning Styles and Outlooks (ALSO), a centre that offers free literary services to adults and families in the downtown area.
Shalma Reynolds, ALSO’s children’s program assistant, said this is the centre’s third year partnering with Carleton Serves.
“We rely on volunteer support,” Reynolds said. “The Carleton Serves program provides us with one day where we can get a lot of work done.”
At a centre where the goal is to stop the cycle of illiteracy, volunteers assembled over 200 reading kits for the organization’s Reading and Parents Program (RAPP).
Twelve Carleton students spent the afternoon cutting out construction paper crafts while others in the group counted out hundreds of Campbell’s soup labels.
Reynolds said the soup company offers a program that lets you exchange labels for children’s books. She said they’re collecting them to try and fund the program, which costs $8,000 to run at eight different sites across the city.
When she immigrated, volunteer Naeima Rage said she had three siblings all under the age of five, and her mother didn’t speak the language.
“She was learning it simultaneously and it was difficult for her,” Rage said.
Carleton Serves co-ordinator Kristina Dunbar said Carleton Serves is the kickoff to Carleton’s community service learning initiatives.
“Community service learning is different because there’s a reflection base to it,” Dunbar said. “It’s not just volunteering, it’s actually going out into the community and then relating it back to what you’re learning in the classroom.”
Dunbar said she hopes students who had a taste of community service will want to continue with it and give back again in the future.