SUNY Oneonta students gear up for volunteer day

Mike Forster Rothbart, The Daily Star, Oneonta, N.Y.
·2 min read

May 7—Hundreds of SUNY Oneonta students plan to head out Saturday morning for a day of volunteering.

The annual Into the Streets volunteer day has been held for about 25 years but was canceled for the last two because of COVID-19, said Linda Drake, director of the Center for Social Responsibility and Community at SUNY Oneonta, during a telephone call on Friday.

The students will start the day with breakfast, paperwork and free T-shirts before heading out in teams of 10 to 12. "I get so excited in the morning because it's very exhilarating when you see hundreds of students in one place. Ready to go out there," Drake said.

This year there are almost 300 students signed up to help at 24 nonprofit sites across the county. Many of the organizations are in Oneonta, but students will travel as far as the Pierstown Grange, north of Cooperstown, to clean indoors and out, and Pathfinder Village in Edmeston to paint a barn.

"I think many students want to give back to our community. And this year might have been a little more challenging to do that," she said. "This particular event is a great way to work together with your friends, while having fun and really making a difference."

The program has grown over the years, averaging 45 to 50 sites and 600 to 800 students per year.

The lower turnout this year reflects a national trend. The percent of Americans who said they volunteered their time for charitable organizations dropped in 2020, and has continued to decline since then, according to a January poll from Gallup. 56% of U.S. adults said they had volunteered in 2021, the lowest it has been since 2009. Charitable giving also declined in 2020 but has since rebounded.

"When one thinks of volunteering, one doesn't think about the money that the volunteer is saving the nonprofit," Drake said. In one day, 281 SUNY Oneonta student volunteers will provide $50,580 worth of free service in the county, she calculated. "We are making a difference while having the satisfaction of giving back."

The community organizations rely on the students' day of help, according to Drake.

"Many of our nonprofits in this county are staffed by retired people, and they don't always have the manpower or the funds to hire people, right? Or they can't do the work themselves. So this particular event is very valuable to them, and they wait for it."

The projects mostly involve manual labor such as mulching, landscaping and spring cleanups. Students will work on a gazebo for the town of Maryland, build a new trail at the Nature Conservancy's Emmons Pond Bog Preserve and install dog play areas at the Susquehanna SPCA's new facility.

Mike Forster Rothbart, staff writer, can be reached at mforsterrothbart@thedailystar.com or 607-441-7213. Follow him at @DS_MikeFR on Twitter.