Volunteering in your community is a way to not only benefit the community, but also show people a different side of the community they live in, said Tony Ive, Outreach and Recruitment Student Coordinator for the University of Idaho Center for Volunteerism and Social Action.
He said UI and Moscow have a good relationship when UI is planning community service events, especially large events such as Saturday of Service.
The City of Moscow also enjoys planning events that involve the whole community and bring together citizens and leaders of Moscow, Jen Pfiffner, assistant to the city supervisor, said.
One of those events, the annual Moscow Clean Up Day started at9 a.m. Friday, she said.
Even though the weather was not sunny, people came up to do some spring-cleaning for the day, Pfiffner said.
The city provided trash bags for the people who came to help clean up the city.
Besides providing an opportunity for people of the city to mingle with each other, the day also helps to beautify the city for graduation, Pfiffner said.
She said graduation from both UI and Washington State University brings in an influx of people and helping to have the city look its best for everyone is important.
“It also has the city celebrate Earth Week,” she said.
Ive said having an event that is simple and gets people to go out and volunteer is important.
“They go and clean up trash for three hours, that is good, that’s great,” he said. “It gives people experience and benefits the community.”
He also said it could open up the door to those people volunteering more, because they see what it is like and might want to help out more often.
He said that people often think they need to go somewhere else to get a great and meaningful experience by volunteering, but that isn’t the case.
“We have a lot of the same issues locally as other countries do,” he said.
Volunteering is a way that people can see those issues first hand and help the community overcome different issues, he said.
“Volunteering shows you what really happens in your community,” Ive said.
Having an event that is simple and meaningful is one of the first steps in having people become more involved, even when it is cleaning up the city, he said.
He said when people clean their city they become aware of how dirty it is and what it takes to keep a city looking good.
Jemma Marrow, a UI student who organizes highway clean-ups for UI’s Collegiate FFA, said it is surprising sometimes how dirty a road can be and how long it takes to clean one stretch of a highway.
“I’m sure the city is the same way,” she said. “Oftentimes you don’t realize how much trash can be in one place.”
Marrow said she has known people who change their littering habits after a day of picking up trash, and could see that happening in Moscow as well.
Pfiffner said that it is always great when volunteers come and make the city more beautiful.
Allison Griffith can be reached at [email protected]