Service Saturday
Oglethorpe students had the opportunity to volunteer at Open Hand Atlanta or the Blue Heron Nature Preserve this past Saturday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. as part of the Service Saturday projects.
Organized by the Center for Civic Engagement, students traveled from Oglethorpe University to Open Hand Atlanta. Volunteers helped serve their community by packing meals for those in need.
Open Hand believes everyone deserves access to proper nutrition no matter their age, where they call home, or what their health condition is. Open Hand’s mission statement is “we cook, we deliver, we teach and we care.” As an organization, their vision is to eliminate disability and ultimately death due to nutrition-sensitive chronic disease. The purpose of Open Hand’s existence is to serve their community by empowering people to live healthier and more productive lives.
Core values guide an organization to success. Open Hand has achieved prior success by putting their mission first. They do this by creating access to healthy meals and providing education about proper nutrition. They also embrace diversity, honor their staff and volunteers as their most valuable resource, act with integrity, pursue innovation and pledge accountability.
Even though this was an event organized by the Center for Student Engagement, Open Hand is always in need of volunteers for meal packing, meal delivering, marketbasket packing, culinary assistance, cooler bag packing and special events. If you are interested, please visit https://openhandatlanta.org/volunteer/individual-volunteer-opportunities/ or contact Volunteer Services at (404) 872-2707 if you have any questions.
Oglethorpe University students also had the opportunity to volunteer at the Blue Heron Nature Preserve by doing grounds keeping. This event was hosted by APO as part of the APO Connects initiative and was sponsored by the Center for Civic Engagement.
Breakfast was provided and students were asked to meet at 8:30 a.m. in the TLCC Roundabout for departure. It was also recommended that they dress warm with closed toed shoes and bring water.
The Blue Heron Nature Preserve is a thirty-acre green space located in the heart of Atlanta. In order to create a personal experience with nature, Blue Heron Nature Preserve believes we should engage and motivate people to experience native habits in an urban environment. We can do this by protecting and preserving native habitats and their associated heritage while providing a living nature lab for education and research. Lastly, we must advocate for the preservation and conservation of nature in urban communities.
For more volunteer opportunities at the Blue Heron Nature Preserve, summer help is needed. You can greet parents during drop off and pick up, work with children from ages two to five, and manage office work. For additional volunteer work, visit https://bhnp.org/volunteer-efforts to fill out a form or email Amy Zvonar at amyz@bhnp.org.
