Holiday call for volunteers, aid

Students contributed more than 485,000 service hours

By Benjamin Baxter
The Collegian

Fresno State earned national recognition for the volunteer hours its students provide in community service, but the amount of service may still be uncertain.

According to a report by the office of Civic Engagement and Service-Learning, more than 6,300 Fresno State students provide more than 485,000 hours of volunteer hours last year — time that is worth an estimated $9.5 million.

Director Chris Fiorentino calls those estimates “low-end.”

“I know there are lots of students doing their own service work,” he said. “They might volunteer for their church, a non-profit organization.”

Sophomore liberal studies major Alejandra Ramirez acts as a mentor for local high school students, but without being an authority figure.

“I’m more of a friend,” she said. “It keeps me up to par for how I should be, and they’re held accountable to me for how they’re doing.”

But because she volunteers through her church and is not part of an on-campus group, her volunteer hours are not included in official estimates.

Junior finance major Cody Johnson went to Louisiana last spring with a group of 23 others to provide aid for Hurricane Katrina victims. “It was awesome,” he said. “We worked in St. Bernard Parish.

Johnson is a member of Campus Crusade for Christ. Senior enology major Mario Martini, president of the organization, said group members more often find other outlets for service.

“We haven’t done anything organized ourselves recently, though,” he said. “We mostly have members that are in smaller organized service projects.”

Martini said the group did not report the community service hours for the report. “I heard about the report,” he said, “but I never knew how they got the numbers or where they got the numbers from.”

Fiorentino said the survey only includes students volunteering through a class or program based on campus. Official clubs and organizations are also included in the estimate, but only 77 reported their community service. That’s only a 39 percent response rate, he said.

Fiorentino said he believes if more campus clubs reported their services, the recorded number of hours from those organizations would increase.

“We have no way to improve that estimate if the clubs and organizations don’t respond to our surveys,” he said.

According to the report, some of the clubs and organizations that provide the most community service include fraternities and sororities, organizations like the Craig Business scholars and on-campus programs like American Humanics.

Students involved in American Humanics do spend up to 300 hours at an internship, and the more than 60 students involved provided almost 5,000 hours of community service.

According to the report, internships outside American Humanics provide more than half of the tabulated community service — providing 283,000 hours among 784 students. Service-Learning courses — classes which list community service as a course requirement — provide the second-largest amount of service: 68,000 hours among more than 3,600 students.

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