Alicia Paul ’18 was inspired to start volunteering because her parents would have her tag along to volunteer events and encourage her to participate. She enjoyed “trying new things, learning about the community, and meeting new people” from an early age.

When she got to Elon, Paul decided volunteering would be something she would continue to pursue during her four-year career. Her first step was to reach out to the Kernodle Center for Service Learning and Community Engagement and look for openings. It was there she discovered an opening with the Positive Attitude Youth Center as a LINCS coordinator position.

LINCS stands for “Leaders in Collaborative Service” and is made up different student coordinators who each work with one of nine community partner organizations. LINCS are primarily responsible  for volunteer recruitment and coordination, working with academic service learning students, and serving at their organizations 6-8 hours each week.​

In addition to her LINCS position, Paul is a member of Alpha Phi Omega, a co-ed service fraternity. She has to complete at least 25 hours of service each semester and attend meetings and events throughout the semester. She was inducted during her first-year after attending meetings, taking a chapter quiz, interviewing and completing 15 hours of service. This organization has allowed her to spread awareness about PAYC and LINCS and recruit volunteers to her events.

Through her experiences Alicia realized the importance of commitment and patience in volunteering, especially with children, “I experienced a huge difference from my first semester to my second when the children realized that I was not going to disappear after a few months,” she reflects.  “This commitment to volunteering long-term allowed us to develop strong friendships that impacted their ability to learn and grow.” 

The children she has helped have brought back higher grades and that is something she is so proud to carry with her. Paul hopes to take this newfound knowledge and find an after-school program like PAYC where she can tutor after graduating from Elon.

Students have learned how to handle crisis management and balance the different perspectives of local businesses to find a compromise. Students present a final project of their findings to the client. They worked on projects ranging from new branding strategies, logos, strategic measurement tools, surveys of students and residents, and social media and sales representatives management to build business awareness.

Through the years, businesses have built a trust with the students after meeting over the course of two semesters. Students walk away from the course with a better understanding of how to be a consultant, problem-solver, project manager and clear communicator. Small businesses have the challenge of not being able to afford a consulting firm or resources to promote their business, so the students offer their services in exchange for real client experience. The biggest take away for students is their adaptability to new situations in the workplace, which will definitely be a future asset when looking for jobs.

One of this year’s students, Kailen Zorzi, worked with Graham’s city government and local Burlington business owners. The work involved “finding out how to use their experiences and input for our project solutions in the respective communities,” she says. “We’ve held town hall meetings, one-on-one meetings with business owners and community stakeholders, and presented our solutions to Graham city council throughout the process.”

This service-learning component creates a holistic academic experience to revitalize local businesses and learn important long-term sales and consulting skills. Norvell hopes to continue working with these local businesses and allowing students to progress these relationships. 

Tara Nager, an 2012 alumni of 51±¬ÁÏÍø with a degree in Human Services, grew passionate about working with children. It all started when she discovered The Salvation Army Boys & Girls Club. 

Her volunteer involvement expanded across Lunch Buddies and Boys & Girls Club because she wanted to help make an impact in a child’s life. “I found an organization where the ideals and principles really struck a chord with me and I knew I was helping shape and mold children to reach their full potential,” Nager said. 

She has been able to use her human services studies degree and apply what she learned at Elon to her volunteering and future career. This opportunity from the Kernodle Center opened up doors to take her on a completely new life path.

Serving children is a top priority for the organization. The mission of the Boys & Girls Club is “to enable all young people, especially those who need us most, to reach their full potential as productive, caring, responsible citizens.”

“It is so special to see the kids in the club grow up year after year and eventually come back to thank the staff for instilling in their minds that they had value and significance,” she said. ‘I have members calling me their ‘Club Mom’ and trying to follow my every move. These relationships are the most rewarding part of my job.”

Nager loves building her evolving connection to Elon by working with student volunteers each year and staying connected to past advisors and professors. She loves to share her “story of finding a passion while at Elon and turning it into a career will inspire someone to their passion in life, as scary as it may seem.”

These programs provided an opportunity for students to meet a new group of friends, see a new place, and give their spring break a purpose.

Jesse Newman, a volunteer on the Criminal Justice program in Columbia, South Carolina, spent his week with a group that mentored youth in the South Carolina Juvenile Justice Department. The students toured several juvenile facilities that offered programs to the students such as welding, carpentry, and music.

Regardless of the offenses they had committed, these young people could still pursue their personal interests. Newman reinforced that the facility’s mindset was, “Your past is your past. It is time to move on.”

He saw the students making an effort to forgive themselves and move forward to becoming contributing members of society.

Students that traveled to Treasure Beach, Jamaica also worked with youth to promote education in rural areas. They collaborated with Sandy Bank Infant School, a local primary school, by coordinating classroom instruction and worked on a variety of projects including the creation of a community garden.

Elon students discovered how to disconnect from the digital world and fully immerse themselves in the Jamaican local culture. Dierdre Shivak, an education major at Elon, found the differences in our education systems to be intriguing.  “I could take what I was learning there and implement it here or vice versa,” says Shivak.

One of this year’s most timely trips was to Houston, Texas, to work on disaster relief by collaborating with international organization Community Collaborations to help with clean up and rebuild areas devastated by Hurricane Harvey.

Student coordinator Ethan Kaufmann valued working on the four different homes of families who all shared such unique devastation stories. He shared that “we truly had an impact on their lives and we helped take a burden off their shoulders. Most of these homes were small and completely flooded, so our work made a huge impact on them getting to move back in.”

In efforts to attract Elon students to the free public-wide events, Lott helped start a new event for the month of March. Downtown Burlington is excited to announce that the is back again this year! On March 17 from 5 to 10 p.m., the streets of downtown Burlington will close as the community lights up with a decorated golf cart parade, live music from traditional bagpipers and drummers, food and store vendors, games, and face painting.

“I wanted to incorporate service-learning into the ‘Early Childhood Language and Literacy’ class to give my students the chance to apply their knowledge from lectures to the classroom environment,” Knight-McKenna said. 

Mary Knight-McKenna and fellow coordinator, Heidi Hollingsworth, initiated the supplemental program, “Little Village.” Originally, they assessed the younger siblings from the “It Takes a Village” and found that they could start tutoring the pre-elementary students as well.

The purpose of the program is to encourage early language development. “I love seeing the growth of the two to five-year-olds that attend and the interest level and interactivity of families in the program,” Professor Knight-McKenna said. “My students’ development as a future teaching professional is supplemented by this integration of knowledge.”

The younger students learn the importance of creativity and imagination as they role play and build real-life scenes and scenarios, such as playing a doctor, astronaut, or dentist. Service-learning requires more preparation and reflection than just volunteering. It is beneficial to review what is not working in the classroom curriculum and figuring out ways to change it, Knight McKenna said.

The future of service-learning for education majors is likely to expand as families create a dependence on the curriculum and knowledge the Elon students share with the children. Those who were involved in the “Little Village” program will come back and visit the students who helped them develop their skills.

Elon students believe service-learning is “worth every bit of extra time, effort, and dedication because they gain more from it than they first expected. The takeaways are positive and at the end, students walk away saying it was worth it. It brings the curriculum to life,” Knight-McKenna said.

Students with this service-learning experience learn to cope and take things in stride. They progress as teachers and gain patience and self-confidence while learning about human growth and development. It sets them apart from the average student graduating with an Education degree.

For more information about academic service-learning courses at Elon, visit the Kernodle Center for Service Learning and Community Engagement website.

As an Elon student, she was a political science and public administration double major with a minor in international studies in business. She was actively involved with Elon Volunteers and went to New Orleans five times for Hurricane Katrina recovery assistance. Toomey also represented children in court through the local guardian ad litem program and interned for Congressman Doug Lamborn on Colorado on Capitol Hill.

Toomey stayed with her first job at the U.S. Census Bureau on a manufacturing energy consumption survey for a little more than eight years. She organized financial support from Elon to help an animal shelter in Waveland, Mississippi, where she adopted her German Shepard, Guinness. After graduation, Toomey went on to get her master's degree in international commerce and policy.

Toomey was inspired to join FEMA’s organization by the Sept. 11 attacks. She comes from a family of firefighters and felt inclined to start her high school program “Shore 2 Help” where she organized donations of goods and supplies for the first responders at Ground Zero.  

After being with FEMA for almost a year she is so touched by the impact she has made in such a short amount of time. "All the crazy hours aren’t a burden because you know the work you are doing is really helping,” Toomey said. “I volunteer to do more hours than required because I want to help the disaster relief.”

The most difficult part of her job is working the helplines. Toomey said that you have to be emotionally prepared for a range of people calling in and trying to help survivors cope with their distress.  

Toomey believes that working for FEMA is exciting and unpredictable. “It keeps you on your toes,” she said. “I will never get bored working here because I will always be on different projects and have different states to travel to for disaster recovery. FEMA wants you to personally grow and encourages continuous education.”

They prepared more than 1,000 meals for the even distribution between two local organizations: 

• , which functions as an emergency shelter, resource day center, community kitchen, and food pantry to provide services for the hungry and homeless in the local community.
•  , which offers similar services to school, partnerships, resource agencies, and other mission organizations. 

After a day of hard work and cooking, the dining trucks were loaded and the food was heated and served to both organizations to give a real Thanksgiving meal to those who needed it most. 

Casey Claflin, digital media marketer for Elon Dining, helped deliver the meals to the organizations prior to the event. “It was my first time witnessing this event, but I was struck by the relationships that had built up over the years between our staff at Elon Dining and the organizations,” she said. “I thought it was very cool that the same people had been involved in this event for years now.”

The organizations both enjoyed a feast of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, green beans, rolls and cookies prepared by Elon Dining Service staff. One Aramark manager, Anton Downey, was impressed by  how many volunteers showed up to serve meals, sacrificing part of their own Thanksgiving Day to take part in the event.

It is truly powerful to watch the pleasure of those serving to others, rather than indulging in their own Thanksgiving meal. The true meaning of Thanksgiving was witnessed that day. 

Elon Dining supports Allied Churches throughout the year in partnership with Campus Kitchen out of the Kernodle Center for Service Learning and Community Engagement. Elon Dining donates protein and grains and allows Campus Kitchen’s student volunteers to use the Lakeside Dining Hall kitchen each week to prepare 150 meals that go to Allied Churches.

In addition to weekly cooking shifts, Campus Kitchen also has farm shifts, delivery shifts and an education and nutrition team that do outreach to campus and the community. To get involved and/or to learn about more about Campus Kitchen, please visit the .

to see the video of the event in action.

Lynch has participated throughout her time at Elon and Becca has been involved for the past three years. Originally, Lynch discovered her passion for volunteering during a service-learning human service studies class and Becca, through her sorority service requirement. Over the years they have built strong relationships with the residents and inspired several other volunteers to carry on this legacy.

Student volunteers learn how to push their comfort zone through interaction and conversation with a different age group from their own and building lasting relationships with the residents. Lynch has a close bond she has developed with a resident named Billie.

During summer months and while she was studying abroad, Lynch was not able to volunteer so she would send Billie postcards and exchange phone calls to keep in touch. Lynch considers Billie “a good friend and looks forward to her for advice on every Friday visit.”

Karpinos shares a similar connection with Billie, and says the most memorable lesson she has learned from the residents is how to listen and connect. Each resident takes advantage of the opportunity to share their life stories, adventures, romances, and careers, she says. Karpinos shares that “it is amazing to hear their first-hand experiences to topics I had only learned about in history textbooks.”

Lynch and Karpinos introduced several volunteers to the possibilities of developing insights and relationships with the older generations. Something as simple as doing a craft or asking one of the residents a personal question is enough to make their day.

As these senior leaders graduate they hope that they have left the mark on other volunteers and given them a chance to recognize the positive impact they have made at Blakey Hall. Lynch noted that her Elon experience "would not be what it has been if Blakey Hall had not become such an integral part of my life. I cannot imagine Elon without Blakey Hall, Linking Generations or Billie.”

Two groups of Elon students had to opportunity to leave their comfort zones while spending fall break conducting service-learning activities ranging from tree-chopping and cutting firewood on Turtle Island Preserve near Boone, N.C., to hiking and working in the garden with an Art Space Charter School in Asheville, N.C.

The students on the Turtle Island trip had the opportunity to detach from their external surroundings and “rough it” without electricity, running water and the modern luxuries they are accustomed to. The trip members grew close because they had the opportunity to disconnect from typical relationship-building distractions while bailing hay, tending to livestock, constructing shelters and preparing food as a team.

“This alternative break inspired future service and leadership efforts here at Elon because it impacted each and every one of the participants in a positive way,” said Olivia. “No one was ready to leave and return back to Elon when the break was over, and we have all talked about going back again.”

The students on the Asheville program had a different and equally rewarding experience working with a charter school in the Asheville area. They had firsthand interactions with teachers and students and hiked the Catawba Fall and Lookout Mountain.

Julianna Volpini Costa ’20, a first-time participant in an alternative fall break program, shared her trip experience and her initial motivation for participating.

Art Space is a school that offers the K-8 education with an integrated visual and performing arts approach. Elon students helped teach the children invaluable lessons for the future.

Both groups woke up early and worked hard each day to make the most of the short break. They came back to Elon with a newfound outlook on leadership and service-learning.