The Kernodle Center for Civic Life has been providing service and volunteer opportunities to Elon students since 1995, leaving them with unforgettable memories and valuable lessons. Among these opportunities are the Alternative Breaks, immersive service experiences aimed at addressing pressing domestic and global social issues in new communities.

Liwei Chen ’25, an applied mathematics and statistics, who went on the Spring Alternative Break trip to Washington D.C. focused on housing and homelessness said her passion for social issues, particularly homelessness, drove her to participate in the trip to the nation’s capital.

“Since I never went last year due to the pandemic, I jumped at the chance to go this year. It was a good opportunity to be able to explore a place that I’ve never been and learn about homelessness in the capital,” she said.

During the trip, Chen and her team worked to package and distribute food to displaced communities, including packing lunches for elementary schools in food deserts and visiting Central Union Mission, a shelter that houses homeless people.

“I was surprised by how little food they have to live on, even from donations. It was just a few canned goods,” she said.

As an international student from China, she noticed the number of people she would consider part of her community in these homeless communities. “I was also surprised to see the amount of old Asian people who were homeless in the D.C. area. Mostly minorities who were homeless in these spaces.”

Despite the challenges, Chen found the experience to be valuable, both in terms of the impact they made and the connections they formed.

“The teamwork we created on the trip was amazing. Doing work together and seeing the impact we left on the community was a great experience. We spent a lot of time getting to know each other and there were really fast connections,” she said.

The trip also taught her some important life lessons.

“I learned to respect others more. Not everyone has the same background you have. Be kind to other people, because everyone has their own stories. Reach out and connect with people outside of your community, you never know who you will meet. And, of course, cherish your food! Don’t waste it. Those people only have a little bit of food,” she said.

Overall, Chen felt that the trip was a valuable experience that helped her grow as a person.

“It was a really valuable trip. I gained friends and experiences that I will never forget,” she said.

The members of Elon’s chapter of Alpha Chi Omega sorority know firsthand the impact of working with a community partner. The sorority’s philanthropy is domestic abuse awareness and they aim to educate Elon students and the community about it while raising funds for the local women’s shelter, Family Abuse Services of Alamance County. Emily Burgess ’23, the previous vice president of philanthropy for Alpha Chi Omega, spoke about the organization’s work with the Alamance-based community partner.

Burgess, a human services studies major, was drawn to become more involved in Alpha Chi Omega because of her passion as an advocate for domestic violence and sexual assault victims. She had wanted to work in this area since high school and saw the opportunity to dip her feet into it through Alpha Chi.

“I’ve been very involved in service throughout my whole life, it has always been very prevalent in my family,” Burgess said. “I’m very passionate about being able to make a difference in the lives around me and the place I am living. And in working with Family Abuse Services, I get to see that direct impact and learn how to best serve my community.”

As the vice president of philanthropy, she was responsible for planning all philanthropy events for the spring and fall 2022 semesters. This was a nice way to bring awareness to the issue of domestic violence and connect with the Family Abuse Services (FAS) coordinator, as well as to grow as a person.

Alpha Chi Omega’s philanthropy is focused on domestic violence awareness, and every chapter has to be within a five-mile radius of a women’s shelter. The national organization places a lot of emphasis on making an impact locally and connecting with the community around you.

“Rather than donating to national domestic violence services, Alpha Chi really wants us to make a local impact by working with domestic violence organizations in our area. That makes the work we do stand out from the rest,” she said.

All money raised throughout the year is donated to FAS, providing a direct contribution to the community and allowing the members to see that effect.

All chapter members are trained to work personally with the women at the shelter. The training includes Domestic Violence 101, a session provided by FAS explaining its role and different forms of domestic violence, statistics, healthy versus unhealthy relationships, Alamance County statistics and language to use.

With events such as the “Walk a Mile in Their Shoes” event, Alpha Chi Omega has worked to bring awareness to the fact that one in four women in the U.S. are victims of domestic violence. The event happened for the first time last fall and encouraged attendees to wear purple or white to support domestic violence awareness. A visual presentation with purple and white balloons illustrated the number of people to be affected by domestic violence.

“I loved this event because we were able to raise awareness on campus about domestic violence. A lot of students came up to the group asking what we were walking for, and it was really impactful for us to bring that situation to light on campus.”

The Kernodle Center for Civic Life encourages students to seek out these incredible service connections in Alamance County. Working with community partners can provide valuable takeaways, such as recognizing the importance of the community you live in and understanding how to make a positive impact. By working with community partners, you can see firsthand the direct impact you can make in your own “backyard.”

“Working with FAS has taught me so much about the area I live in but also how I want to continue to make an impact wherever I live post-Elon,” Burgess said.

In terms of upcoming philanthropy events to support Family Abuse Services of Alamance County, Alpha Chi Omega is hosting “Stack ’em High with Alpha Chi” on Tuesday, April 4 from 5 to 8 p.m., and a pop-up thrift shop later in the semester.

The Kernodle Center for Civic Life inspires, educates and prepares students to partner with diverse communities to address local and global challenges. Through Elon Volunteers!, the center is a hub for service on campus, providing opportunities for Elon students to engage through various types of programming. This is all possible through the hard work and dedication of its many student leaders.

Yuzu Do ’23, the executive director of outreach and collaboration for Elon Volunteers!, is one of those hard-working leaders. In her position, she is tasked with leadership and student recruitment as well as outreach.

Born and raised in Vietnam until she was 12 years old, Do now lives in Greensboro with her family and has dedicated much of her time to helping other immigrant students and children through her work at the Kernodle Center.

She originally became involved with Elon Volunteers! through immigrant and refugee outreach at the Center for New North Carolinians, a program devoted to fostering a safe and supportive learning environment for immigrants and refugees living in North Carolina. At the center, she worked as a volunteer coordinator.

“I knew I wanted to work with children that are going through the same experience I went through as a young immigrant,” she said. “I saw myself in those children and I wanted to encourage them by teaching them all of the opportunities available to them like I was taught myself.”

While there, she immediately made meaningful connections with the children through their shared backgrounds and their ability to see themselves in one another. Do continued by reflecting on her own time spent in a program similar to the Center for New North Carolinians when she was a child and how hard it was to learn a new language and transition into a new culture.

“When I came to America, I was going to a school called Doris Henderson Newcomers School. Most of the people who worked there were American students volunteering and that inspired me to do the same,” Do said.

She highlights CNNC as a service opportunity that has stuck with her throughout the years. She spoke about how working there acted as a positive reminder that your work will impact others no matter how much or how little you put in.

Her experience there opened her eyes to how important reflection is when it comes to community service and how she believes a lot of that needed reflection has been lost.

“For me, reflection is one of the most important parts of community service. I feel like that aspect has been sort of lost and my time at CNNC helped me understand just how important it is,” Do said.

As she continued working with Elon Volunteers!, she was drawn to apply for a higher leadership position despite her previously shying away from it in the past. What pushed her to make that leap into a leadership role was a personal challenge to improve her outreach and sociability skills.

Through her executive director position, Do hopes that she is expanding the perspectives of Elon Volunteers! through her identity as an immigrant.

As far as what encourages her to return to the Kernodle Center each year, she credits the people and relationships she has formed through it.

“[The Kernodle Center] really is made up of people who are sympathetic and open-minded. And those people draw me back every year,” Do said.

She has always had the desire to help people and give back to the community around her. She talked about the feeling of joy she gets knowing that she can make someone’s day better and how even the thought of that keeps her driven to do more.

“Supporting people is something I really enjoy. Being able to say, ‘Oh I helped someone today,’ keeps me going to do more and more,” she said.

She wants to encourage other students to get involved with all the things the Kernodle Center has to offer, such as the Special Olympics happening in April. She highlights it as a good starting point for service and a great opportunity for all types of students to get involved in.

“People from all kinds of backgrounds and service experiences can participate in it. It is just a nice opportunity for people to come together and give back,” she said “Anything is possible and your story is your strength. I was able to embrace and reflect on my own experience and now I use that to have a positive impact on others.”

The Kernodle Center for Civic Life is committed to providing and teaching students about the wide array of service opportunities available to them. The center aims to share the impactful service experiences of students and faculty alike, encouraging others to be active members of their community.

In highlighting a faculty member who is committed to creating change through research, service and leadership, Associate Professor of Public Health Stephanie Baker is a shining example.

Baker has devoted herself to anti-racism work in all aspects of her life. After graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill with a Ph.D. in health behavior, Baker began shifting to her focal area of anti-racism organizing after attending a training about it in Chapel Hill and becoming committed to that work. She then connected with people in her hometown of Durham who also attended those trainings and they began organizing workshops there.

“Then I thought, ‘Well, if I’m going to do this outside of work, I can do this inside of work too,’” Baker said, “My research, my practice, my teaching, my service … I’m always using an anti-racism lens.”

Through shifting this organizing into her work, Baker also joined a community-academic medical partnership called the Greensboro Health Disparities Collaborative. There she began learning about authentic partnerships, power sharing/shifting, and community-based participatory research which has evolved into her work today.

“I use community-based participatory research approaches and an anti-racism racial equity lens to address health inequities, mostly. But all types of inequities are connected and related,” Baker said.

In speaking on where her passion for service stems from, Baker reflected on her ideas around volunteer work throughout her life and how said ideas have changed to focus on the root of the problem.

“As I was growing up, I was always taught to have a service-oriented soul,” Baker said, “But when I went to that training, I started to get a better understanding of the benefits of volunteerism and the downfalls of volunteerism.”

She continued to speak about how most volunteering “doesn’t actually shift power so that people don’t need volunteers anymore.” She originally thought that volunteering was the end-all-be-all of service, but after much reflection and learning, she has come to recognize that while helping in the moment is needed, organizing, shifting power and resources, centering the people most impacted by problems, and creating transitional spaces in our society will free people of their problems indefinitely.

“It was hard for me to deal with the fact that I had spent so much time and energy doing that when I could have been doing both. I could have been giving people what they need while I was also keeping my eye on the foundation of why the problem exists in the first place,” Baker said.

Further in Baker’s career, when she started working with the Greensboro Health Disparities Collaborative, she learned a way to both help in the immediate and focus on the root of the problem through community-based participatory research (CBPR).

“It requires shared learning, shared capacity building and shared power at every stage. In its purest form, CBPR involves all partners from the very beginning to the very end,” Baker said, “First, we look at community assets and strengths. Then we think about what the community needs and the community tells us that.”

She explains that CBPR is an approach to research that centers on partnerships of academics, agency representatives and community members who have lived experiences with the issues at hand. In this research, it is important to have diverse and differently educated perspectives at the table and not to discourage one or the other.

“It is not about being an expert in any particular topic. It is about having an expertise and approach to valuing strengths, challenges, partnerships and collaborations to come together to fix an issue,” Baker said.

Baker’s work goes far beyond Durham as well. In 2016, an Elon alum invited Baker to be on a steering committee to address the issue of racial disparities in infant mortality in Alamance County. Baker took this opportunity to get to the root of the problem and not be a part of something that was looking for a “band-aid solution.”

“I said, ‘If we are going to get real about these racial inequities then we need to bring the Racial Equity Institute here and do that two-day workshop so that we can have a shared analysis of where this is all coming from,” Baker said.

With that, Baker and the committee brought the first phase of the racial equity workshop to Alamance County in the spring of 2016.

“And that effort grew into what is now called the AREA, the Alamance Racial Equity Alliance, and they continue to organize and bring workshops, trainings and create space for conversations for folks in Alamance county,” Baker said.

After all of these incredible accomplishments in organizing and creating change in these spaces, Baker has stepped back from Alamance County to allow it to continue to grow. In this time, she had become available to accept students as mentors in her research efforts.

“I am always open to having students who are interested in using a racial equity lens and community engagement to address pretty much any problem,” Baker said, “It can be creative movement or more traditional academic movement.”

Baker highlighted the Kernodle Center for being incredibly supportive of her various efforts in the community.

“Anything that I’ve ever needed they have been helpful in helping me figure out how to do it. And to have that type of support, especially as a young faculty member has been crucial. Building community partnerships take a significant amount of time, effort and energy, and they have been nothing but supportive to me,” Baker said.

Nicole McGinty, a junior from Massachusetts, is the Elon Volunteers! executive director of communication and education. Majoring in public health with a sociocultural focus and minoring in statistics, wellness and health, and poverty and social justice, she has been involved with Elon Volunteers! since her freshman year.

“Freshman year was when I first got involved, it was like COVID 2020 so campus was kind of weird and it was hard to meet people,” McGinty said. “I did a lot of work with the farm shifts and that’s when I think I first kind of broke into the Kernodle Center.”

McGinty began forming a sense of community in the center and continued to volunteer at different sites. She began taking interest in leadership positions her sophomore year, leading an Alternative Spring Break and becoming a coordinator for a partnership new to the Kernodle Center.

“Last year, I was also one of the City Gate Dream Center coordinators which was a new partnership last year. So, it was interesting to see that from the ground up,” McGinty said.

Her leadership and passion for Elon Volunteers! continued to develop as she worked out in the community. She took interest in working more internally in the center as an executive director so that she could find ways to aid in the continued progress of the organization that she cared about.

“My role in education is to educate the leaders before they go out into the community. So, just switching to that internal side and working together with the pro-staff and executive directors to further Elon Volunteers!,” she said.

Through progressing the organization, Elon Volunteers! has also greatly aided in her Elon experience. McGinty plans on conducting research with one of the program’s community partners, the City Gate Dream Center, which she has worked closely with since her sophomore year.