The Center for Community Engagement’s annual Service & Internship Fair made for a busy and successful afternoon at the Seawolf Plaza. The Service & Internship Fair is a campus-based tabling event that hosts a group of community organizations partnered with SSU. Specializing in causes ranging from shelter provision to health care, these essential community partners arrived on campus to recruit students looking for volunteer and internship opportunities.
This event unifies the community at large and is a valuable networking tool for students that are seeking to effectively contribute to their community in a productive manner while acquiring work experience and newfound knowledge.
One community partner tabling at the event was Committee on the Shelterless, commonly abbreviated as COTS, an organization that assists individuals enduring homelessness. Representing COTS at the Service & Internship Fair was engagement specialist, Diana Morales, who previously experienced homelessness prior to working with COTS for nine-and-a-half years.
Recounting tabling events as successful for reeling in students to work with COTS, Morales was keen on finding community-driven volunteers for the organization: “[Volunteers] can expect flexibility with their schedule, and [COTS] can offer opportunities that interest them,” Morales said. “It’s not just one thing or two things–it’s a lot of different things!”
By the Bay Health, a home health care service that provides palliative care to all age groups, offers flexible scheduling to volunteers who wish to work with them. Describing the service’s volunteer program as “robust,” program manager Kiran Sahota values potential volunteers who are not only empathetic, but fully engaged with their patients. “We want them to be very connected with people,” Sahota said.
Another service-oriented organization at the fair, Halleck Creek Ranch, is focused on providing adaptive horseback riding to individuals with disabilities. Volunteer coordinator, Kayla Andersen, emphasized growth and expansion as a core purpose for the school, in which they are always seeking to recruit new volunteers who are eager to help.
Additionally, Anderson values flexibility in potential volunteers. “There are many different tasks that our volunteers do, so sometimes you just gotta roll with it,” Anderson said. Halleck Creek Ranch offers training to their volunteers, as they do not require volunteers with equestrian nor disability experience.
The community organizations tabling at the 2024 Service & Internship Fair demonstrate that there are a variety of opportunities available for students at SSU who are looking for volunteering opportunities and internships, and that the answer that many of them are looking for might just be found at a busy fair at the Seawolf Plaza. Thank you to all of SSU’s community partners that participated in this year’s Service & Internship Fair!
If you missed out on this year’s Service & Internship Fair, make sure to make it to next year’s!