Valpo Students Team up for Service

A staple of learning through service at Valparaiso University for more than 20 years has been Rebuilding Together. Approximately 100 student volunteers from Valpo will be participating in community cleanup efforts with Rebuilding Together Valparaiso on Saturday, April 16.

This year volunteers will be joining Housing Opportunities, a Valparaiso not-for-profit that provides low-cost transitional housing to clean up and clean out apartments, making them available for new residents. Another group of volunteers will be partnered with the National Association of Women in Construction to help a member of the community restore both her home and a beautiful English Garden that she maintained for years.

For the past 25 years, Rebuilding Together Valparaiso has been working with homeowners within the community to provide affordable homeownership by completing repairs and renovations for low-income homeowners at no charge.

As a part of National Volunteer Week, representatives will be collecting volunteer-hours paperwork April 11-14 from students, faculty, and staff as the campus community attempts to reach 100,000 volunteer hours. Valpo students combined for nearly 67,000 hours of service during the 2009-2010 academic year, a University record.

In addition, an awards night will be held Thursday, April 14, to recognize individuals and organizations that have contributed a considerable amount of volunteer hours throughout the academic year.