Greek life is switching its focus for community service day during Greek Week by teaming up with the Physical Plant Department to beautify UNM campus.
"Community service will kick off the very first day of Greek Week right here at the University on February 20th. We are contributing the time and energy of about 200 students in the morning at the UNM campus. We are going to be removing graffiti, doing some mulching and some recycling projects as well," said Greek Advisor Greg Golden.
The idea to bring Greek life's community service day to UNM came from brainstorming ways the volunteers could impact their community the most, he said.
"We were exploring some creative ways to try and make as much of an impact as possible and that's where the idea of beautifying UNM was brought up," Golden said. "UNM has a lot of needs, it's a beautiful campus, why don't we take the time to invest more in our local community as well as our UNM community."
Steven Alamillo, a junior education major participating in Greek Week, said in his first year of involvement the volunteers went to the zoo.
"It's incredible. You look around and there's so many people and everyone is doing something. There's a need for it, and I'm sure UNM has a need, possibly even more of a need because there is less staff in a larger area," he said.
This is the first year Greek life is teaming up with the Physical Plant Department, Golden said. He said the PPD has had a part in coming up with projects on campus as well as supervising and providing needed resources.
"Their staff has been very generous in giving us their time, plus the PPD does a lot of work on campus every day, and we thought if they could make some of these projects almost too difficult for them, especially in a days time, then we can contribute some time and energy for them to do some projects they have been planning but never had the man-hours or the person-hours," Golden said.
Another new addition to Greek Week this year, is having three locations for volunteers to visit instead of just one, Golden said. This is due to the fact that there are now 900+ students involved in Greek life and the University campus could not manage to supply all of them with a job for the day.
"We have a pretty large group, so we are going to be at the zoo on the very same day helping the turtles, mulching and raking the leaves and also at USS Bullhead Park doing some of the same projects including painting lines on softball fields," he said.
As part of an annual tradition, UNM Greeks wants to raise more money for the charity of their choice than last year, Golden said. Greek life's goal is to raise more than $14,000 this year to beat their total donation last year, which was given to the APS Title I Homeless Project.
"Ultimately the project is a fundraising endeavor. We raise as much as possible as a Greek community and with outside influence as well and the objective is for everyone to try and raise as much money as possible to serve the charity Cuidando Los Niños, a non-profit organization helping homeless children in homeless families," he said.
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Denicia Aragon is a staff reporter with the Daily Lobo. She can be contacted at news@dailylobo.com on Twitter @dailylobo.
