About the 2008 "50 Days of Service"

After a smash-up debut last year, Waldorf College is proud to announce the return of 50 Days of Service. Like last year, the event will feature 50 ongoing days of students and faculty helping those in need both here in the community and all over the world through different service projects.

This year’s event, themed “Called 2 Serve”, kicked off Jan. 21, 2008 – Martin Luther King Day – with a food packaging event in the Atrium. From 12-7 p.m., more than 400 volunteers packaged 62,557 nutritious meals that will be sent to orphanages in Tanzania through the Kids Against Hunger Organization. 50 Days will continue through March 28.

"We were thrilled with the success of last year's 50 Days of Service, and we are excited to move forward our ‘Called 2 Serve’ theme this year,” said Josh Damm, a member of the Committee on Vocation and Service that organizes 50 Days of Service. “The 50 Days is about service and not scheduling, so this year we are keeping the 50 Days open to allow students to serve whenever they want. The more projects each week, the better!"

About Last Year's "50 Days of Service"

Waldorf College, a liberal arts college affiliated with the ELCA, carried out “50 Days of Service”–a campus-wide event emphasizing service to communities, locally and throughout the nation.

SCOPE OF PROJECT
For 50 consecutive days, from March 2 – April 20, 2007, Waldorf students positively impacted the lives of others through hands-on service projects. The projects were student-based and also included participation from Waldorf faculty, staff, alumni, friends and parents.

NATIONAL VOLUNTEER WEEK
The culmination of the event, which coincided with National Volunteer Week (April 15-21), was a 144-mile relay run from the Iowa State Capitol in Des Moines to the front steps of Waldorf’s Salveson Hall in Forest City, Iowa.

VOLUNTEER STATISTICS
The event’s goal was to promote, highlight, and encourage service. A “College Students Helping America” study by the Corporation for National and Community Service reported that the overall percentage of college students who volunteer increased from 27.1 percent to 30.2 percent following Sept. 11. Waldorf is committed to continuing this trend. The report also noted that college students are twice as likely to volunteer as individuals of the same age who are not enrolled in an institution of higher education.

HOW WE SERVED
Recognizing the value of each life regardless of proximity, students traveled across the United States to serve. They went to Mississippi to help with hurricane relief efforts, to Arizona to build houses for Habitat for Humanity, and to the state of Washington to serve at Holden Village. Students also served the local community in various ways.

To celebrate the conclusion of the “50 Days of Service,” 50 students took part in a relay-run from the state capitol in Des Moines to Waldorf to raise money for charity. Half of the money raised was given to Friends of Africa Education, while the other half went to school district's along the relay route so they could provide needy children with essentials for school.