Into the Streets
800 student volunteers, four hours, and a lot of hard work created Into the Streets 2013 at Morningside College. Volunteer students were sent out to different organizations and agencies in the Siouxland Community to help in any way they could.
This tradition has grown in size over the past seven years, to include two thirds of the Morningside student body. The number of participating organizations in nearby cities has also grown. Students have done many different activities, ranging from playing with kids to prairie cleanup. Into the Streets has become such a well-known event that organizations look forward to the help all year. Some organizations are able to save weeks of work on this day.
The director of the Crittenton Center’s Emergency Shelter said, “The volunteers did such a great job. What they did would have taken us months to do.” Regarding the painting and cleaning that the Morningside Men’s Basketball team did for them.
This unique event is also completely student planned. The honor society Omicron Delta Kappa hosts the event every year. This is an honor society for upperclassman students. In this society there is a committee devoted to the planning and preparation of the event.
One of the co-chairs of the committee, Emily Greenlee said, “This was the best committee ever. Over the past four years, I think this was the smoothest the behind the scenes work as gone.”
Emily along with her committee worked for months to find organizations willing to participate, as well as students willing to volunteer. They collectively called close to 125 agencies in the Siouxland area. This calling takes hours to complete as the committee members are working with the schedules of the agencies. The committee successfully found 831 slots for students. While this was over the 800 students that signed up, this was a problem that they greatly preferred to have. Past years had more students than slots, which is a harder problem to solve.
This volunteer service day sets Morningside apart from other colleges. Few colleges set out a day during the busy semester for students to volunteer in the community. What also sets apart this day is the fact that these students are doing this because they want to. Students are not required to participate and do not get class credit if they participate. This says a lot about the student body at Morningside and what is important to them.
Into the Streets represents the mission statement of the college. It takes a great deal of work by dedicated students to plan, as well as hard work on the day from the students who volunteer. Overall, two-thirds of the student body has participated the past five years and if history is any indication, Morningside students will continue to participate for years to come.