Chip in!

Good samaritans and community crusaders assemble! The Barnard Community Service Fair will take place today from 11:30 am to 2pm in the Diana Center Event Oval. Stop by to sign up with one of the many service organizations that will be attending.

Are you feeling guilty about taking free food from clubs you have no interest in joining, but still hungry and broke? Head to 229 Thompson Hall in Teachers College this afternoon from 3–4 pm and volunteer to help out at the closing ceremony of Battle of the Books, a program that encourages West Harlem elementary school students to read and compete to see who knows their books better. Today is the championship round, and there will be copious amounts of friendly competition, free food, and feel-good charity! Email amw2152@columbia.edu if you’re planning to attend.

It’s kind of hard to be thankful for Columbia at the end of November. Finals and papers loom, everyone suddenly remembers what school is like when it’s cold, and you’re just waiting for that “oh shiiiiit” moment the Monday you get back from break. We’re happy to be away this weekend, too, but we figured we’d remind you that there is plenty to be thankful for within the Gates. Meet Kevin McAllister, an electrician at Columbia nicknamed “Mr. Light” because he replaces most lightbulbs on campus. Kevin is also deeply committed to Morningside community service. Bwog is thankful for people like Mr. Light who make Morningside what it is. Sarah Camiscoli writes.

“They call me that because after all these years, I’ve come to know a lot of people. I’ve probably worked in every building off and on campus, so they kind of know me. When there’s a flood, that’s okay, but when the lights are out that’s something else. And when I come in, it feels like I just brighten up their whole day [chuckles]. I’m surprised that they still call me that.” While “Mr. Light” is a clever nickname for a man who has served as an electrician at Columbia and acted a source of vitality to his home community for over twenty years, Kevin McAllister tends to view himself less as a “light” and more as a conduit for community, kindness, and spirit. Otherwise, it would just be too easy.

After 27 years at Columbia, Kevin can say, “I’ve done a lot of things here.” And it has been more than just maintaining voltage. Kevin has served as a union representative, subcontracting and grievance committee member, chief shop steward, and even “with all the hard work and dedication,” union president of Local 241 Transit Workers Union. While his salaried and political work most definitely speak to his charged devotion, Kevin admits, “this is my job, this is where I make money, but my passion is in the work that I do in the community.” It is service that charges him.

“Specializing in saving lives,” Kevin has spent the last two decades organizing Uptown Inner City League, a not-for-profit baseball league that welcomes over 280 kids spanning the ages of twenty-four months to just under twenty years. In organizing groups of toddlers to teens, diverse in age, ethnicity, and gender into baseball teams for the summer, flag football teams for the fall, and “spring training” sessions after winter vacation, Kevin pledges, “We turn no kids away.” And this doesn’t pose too much of a problem since the league’s philosophy is that if a child can walk, he or she can join in. “You have to start that early,” explains Kevin, “Most people don’t want to deal with those kids, but from ages two to seven they can absorb so much.”

In addition to skill, much of that absorption lies within a meaningful understanding of community, one that resonates more to family than to team spirit. “Once you become a part of Uptown Inner City League, you become part of my family,” is how Team Manager McAllister puts it. “They come over and have dinner with my family and me and my wife take them to sporting events.” With the support of his wife (and childhood sweetheart), Stephanie, and the company of his two sons, Kevin keeps himself from burning out by making his success at the family level and his success in the community one and the same. “My success is the success of a lot of people,” is how he puts it. It’s the kind of achievement that manifests itself when a retired player visits his home 15 years later and says, “Thank you for giving us the opportunity to have a place to go.” Read more…

This is what community service looks like.

The campaign for Columbia Community Service, which supports the University’s community outreach programs in the area, officially begins today with an open house and free lunch in Low Rotunda from 11:30 to 1:30. Stop by to find out about the programs Columbia supports, and probably eat something too.

Image via Wikimedia Commons

Thanks, guy!

Kenneth Cole, a fashion designer who has weird, earnest, sometimes squirmy billboards on the West Side Highway, is teaming up with CC and SEAS to launch the Kenneth Cole Community Engagement Program in the fall.

Want to know what that is? Kay.

Kenneth Cole Productions, Inc., CC, SEAS, Center for Career Education and Student Affairs will develop a year-long curriculum that will combine “community-based initiatives,” according to the press release, with classroom work. Kenneth Cole Fellows, as the project’s participants will be dubbed, will take two required courses, have community-based internships over the summer, and get to live in a “unique living-learning arrangement” in dorms. Here’s hoping that doesnt mean the Living Learning Center!

We don’t totally get it, but sounds like you’ll do some good stuff for the community and not have to worry about an internship next summer. Cole is the chairman of amfAR, the largest not-for-profit AIDS foundation, and a founding member of HELP USA, which provides jobs for the homeless. If you’re interested, contact Todd Smith, Associate Dean of Student Affairs, at ts2488@columbia.edu.

Update: Unlikely friendship made somewhat more likely by the fact that Cole’s daughter just graduated from CU.

Columbia Community Outreach 2010 still rocked out on the steps and saved the world despite the winter weather amidst our long-awaited Spring.

Photos by RSN

The Grant Houses Community Garden Project is exactly what it sounds like. Columbia students want to help public housing residents just north of us build a garden for communal use that could become a sustainable and nutritious food source as well as a source of community pride. Liz Naiden reports on the saga of this unusual attempt to go green off-campus.

Twice a week, Rebecca Davies leads a handful of Columbia students up Broadway to the Grant Houses, a public housing development just 7 blocks from College Walk. The students currently lead regular workshops there for an after school program on all things green, sustainable, and nutritious. Well, all things green that kids could ever care about – in recent workshops they have explored worm composting (below), the water cycle, how to roast pumpkin seeds, and the journey that every element of a hamburger takes to get to your plate. The kids learn that everything they eat comes from the soil, and as a bonus “they love anything slimy they can play with, or anything they can taste,” says Davies. But that isn’t all the Grant Houses Community Garden project has always hoped to be.

Over two years ago, Davies got involved in the development of the Food Sustainability Project’s on-campus Community Garden project. In the process of getting recognized as a university group, Davies helped gather professor endorsements for the project, including the endorsement of Professor Sudhir Venkatesh. It was he who first asked Davies what more she would do with the community garden idea if she had the support. She wanted to bring a community garden to “the community outside of Columbia,” she said.

Read more…

Three distinct opportunities to eat for free and check out ways to serve little kids, the world, or just, you know, the community. Read to kids at Project Sunshine, save the world at Amnesty International, or impact your community at � Community Impact!

All three organizations are holding interest meetings tonight. Community Impact�s open house is going on right now in the Earl Hall Auditorium, and will last until about 9pm. Amnesty International�s interest meeting will start at 9:15 in Earl Hall�s Dodge room. Both of these organizations will provide generally �free food,� which obviously could be anything.

If you�re peckish though, check out FREE MAGNOLIA BAKERY CUPCAKES at Project Sunshine�s interest meeting going on right now in Room 404 of the Kraft Center. If you�ve never been there, it�s on 115th between Broadway and Riverside, south side of the street.

Bwog was just stopped by a pair of high school pollsters from New York’s Urban Academy, looking for Columbia students’ opinions on the upcoming election for a project.

Help ‘em out! The young lady is wearing a purple jacket, the young man is sporting a navy blue backwards cap. They’re outside Lerner holding clipboards now. Ask for the “bonus question” about how you feel about Palin’s stance on teenage abortion rights.

Bwog doesn’t know whether this New York Times story about engineers earning credit for service projects in Harlem was originally supposed to run yesterday, but, regardless, we doff our collective (and imaginary) caps to the Grey Lady for its sense of timing.

In short, the engineering school allows students to earn class credit while doing public service at the same time. While this is currently the only project on such a large scale numbers-wise, the Times reports that “at Columbia, other academic departments are now considering integrating service into the curriculum, and community projects have become a key part of the university’s sales pitch to prospective students.”

Other highlights include an appearance by Jack McGourty, a one-sentence mention of today’s “service fair,” and the man behind ServiceNation declaring that “the millennial generation is the greatest serving generation since the greatest generation.” Bwog is happy to score one for optimism.

The world of community service opened wide today in Earl Hall, where student group Community Impact held an open house in an attempt to rope in volunteers.  Bwogger Tony Gong reports.

Presenting yourself at community service group fairs can be tricky. Ideally, you should display a certain level of enthusiasm. But how eager can you appear about visiting senior citizens before people start thinking that you’re kind of weird? I could just imagine:

“Why does he love old people so much?”

“What does he have against the children?”

“Oh, he’s thinking about volunteering for them too?”

“Shit, this kid is doubly messed up.”

Read more…