The library—Northwestern-centric and isolating—is almost the antithesis of NU Gives Back. But when four volunteering junkies started to reminisce about their high school service days during a late-night study session in the library, the seeds for Northwestern’s newest volunteering initiative were planted. NU Gives Back, which takes place this Saturday, aims to unite Northwestern students—many of whom might not otherwise participate in a service project—while they volunteer throughout Evanston and Chicago.
But while NU Gives Back has reached its participation goal with just under 400 students signing up, it’s hard to say what kind of impact it’s going to make.
The festivities start Saturday at 9:30 a.m. with a group breakfast and guest speaker before the groups head to their respective volunteering sites throughout Chicago and the North Shore. The founders have spent months identifying more than thirty volunteer locations like the Heartland Alliance, Lincoln Park Community Shelter and Young Evanston Artists Fair.
Sophomores David Chase, Katie Florez, and Kevin Short and junior Sam Lozoff are responsible for the fledgling idea, and they’re acting as the group’s co-founders.
“It came to fruition a lot more when we started getting grants” Short says. “When we got funds from RHA and NCDC, that’s when we got a real confidence boost because we started to see that our peers and superiors thought this is realistic.”
NU Gives Back may be realistic, but at the same time, it’s a grand idea. At the end of the day, students will spend more time at the three complimentary meals—including a post-volunteering barbeque—listening to the guest speaker and transporting to and from the sites than on actual projects. The time spent volunteering boils down to a mere three hours.
On some level, this is purposeful—the founders know their audience. “There is threshold of when people turn off and won’t be engaged,” Short says. “We still feel the time commitment is adequate. We’re not jading ourselves and thinking those few hours will change the world, we’re just hoping that this will get people excited and that people will keep making those contacts.”
Despite these realizations, the group’s founders are still big dreamers; they don’t shy away from the mushier aspects of community service.
“It’s not about dollars and cents, it’s about people and hearts,” Short says. “We’re looking for active engagement with a wide array of nonprofits that most students will not have worked with before. There are so many people at Northwestern that I see wearing their pre-professional blinders, that are on the straight path to being a CEO and that are neglecting the personal connections. No matter what, service will have a meaningful impact on everyone’s future.”
But in just three hours, what kind of impact can they really make? It’s clear the founders want NU Gives Back to appeal to the masses, perhaps compounding the difficulties of making a deeper, consistent contribution to the volunteering sites.
When they talk about where they see it going ten years down the road, even though they all have the same answer, each one pauses for just a second before they start describing how they want NU Gives Back to eventually become a campus-wide event.
They outline how they’ve earned ASG recognition, making it easier for the organization to grow, and then they confidently state that they hope NU Gives Back one day reaches the same status as Dance Marathon, one of the things you “just have to do, like painting the rock,” as Florez describes it.
“I know it is ridiculous to think about now, but my dream and hope is to see it be a staple in the Northwestern community,” Chase says. “Like I have this whole idea of seeing President Schapiro out there using a shovel in a community garden. I would love to one day see the whole community out there.”
