Dear Colleagues,

The second annual Community & Campus Day of Service will be held on Saturday, April 5 at Memorial Stadium to kick off National Volunteer Week, April 6-12.  As you may recall from the inaugural event last April, more than 1,500 volunteers came together to participate in a number of service projects, including a food packaging project that eventually provided 146,000 meals to the Eastern Illinois Foodbank.  This year, I hope we will see even more volunteers and units involved in the Day of Service.  Please encourage those in your units to get involved either by volunteering for an existing project or by participating in some sort of community service on their own or as a unit during National Volunteer Week. 

Opportunities for volunteering will include:

• A food packaging project on April 5 with a goal of providing 147,000 meals to Eastern Illinois Foodbank (1,000 meals for each year of the University’s public engagement mission)
• Service projects throughout Champaign-Urbana as part of Austin's Day on April 12
• Coming up with a unit volunteer project during National Volunteer Week (last year, Beckman and Fine & Applied Arts both offered projects open to volunteers inside and outside of the unit)
• Visit CUVolunteer.org for additional volunteer opportunities (individual or group)

Please be sure to ask those in your unit to report any unit or individual community service so we can count the hours they spend in the Community & Campus Day of Service total throughout National Volunteer Week.  Remember that the projects are open to anyone in the community, and several are family friendly (children 5 years of age and up can participate in food packaging), so invite others to join you!  More information is available at http://go.illinois.edu/dayofservice, including registration and reporting for volunteer projects. 

Thank you for your support of this important annual event.  I believe it is so critical for us to demonstrate to our students the importance of service in their communities, and it is a great team building opportunity as well. 

Sincerely,

Phyllis M. Wise
Chancellor