School of Communications Students Give Back

            Washington DC- Students in the Howard University School of Communications, have spent the Fall 2011 semester volunteering all around DC in an effort to give back to the community they live in.

            Over the semester the Square One Administration, the current School of Communications Student Council, created volunteer events for the students to participate in. They partnered with a number of organizations around DC such as the Washington DC Humane Society, DC Central Kitchen, Operation Write home, and the Stoddard Baptist Nursing Home, and spent countless hours working to help these organizations with whatever they needed.

            The first event of the semester was the DC Walk for the Animals, where School of C students helped vendors take down their booths, pack up their supplies, and clean up at the end of the event. DC Central Kitchen, which provides thousands of meals for the District’s homeless, enjoyed having the students peel and chop hundreds of pounds of carrots and cauliflower. In the month of November, the students wrote over 150 holiday letters to soldiers overseas to encourage them and raise their spirits during the holiday season. For the most recent event, and the last one for the semester, students used construction paper, glue, glitter, and pipe cleaners to fashion holiday cards for the elderly residents of the Stoddard Baptist Nursing Home, the oldest African-American nursing home in DC.

            Unlike what many may think, the students were excited to volunteer and showed up to the community service events ready to do good. Members of the Annenberg Honors Program, the honors program in the School of Communications, are required to complete 20 hours of community service per semester, but they said that they did not feel that the obligation was unpleasant.

            “There were a lot of fun community service options this year,” Said Antonya Bruno, sophomore Public Relations major, “they seemed to be well thought out and there was a large variety of things we did that helped the community.”

            Darius Thomas, sophomore Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology major, and the Vice-President of the School of Communications Student Council also weighed in with his thoughts on this semester’s community service.

            “I loved the community service this semester,” Said Thomas, “they were well attended and creative. I look forward to seeing more creative community service next semester.”