Knocking door-to-door to recruit volunteers during and after Hurricane Gustav was just a walk in the park for Michael Rhea. “Volunteer LSU is part of the Campus Life department,” said Rhea, Volunteer LSU director. “That department’s mission is to come up with innovative projects that enhance student learning and get students involved in the community.”After Gustav hit, Volunteer LSU leaders, including Rhea, recruited volunteers to help at the University during the hard days after the storm.Volunteer LSU was founded in the spring of 2006, just after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. Rhea, international studies and political science senior, said disasters like Hurricanes Katrina and Gustav really drove him to serve the community.”After Katrina, we noticed that there wasn’t a real service organization on this campus that served as the central location for all things service,” said Campus Life Assistant Director Mallory Trochesset. “Volunteer LSU’s mission is to bring together the LSU community of students, faculty and staff, to alert them to service opportunities in the community, to get them engaged in what’s happening and make a difference in Baton Rouge.”Trochesset said Volunteer LSU membership is open to all students, faculty and staff. Volunteer LSU does not have official membership requirements and therefore, keeps track of their membership numbers through their e-mail list, which currently has around 1,300 people. However, Trochesset said Volunteer LSU has seen a higher volume of traffic in the e-mail list each year.”The unique thing about Volunteer LSU is that it’s open to anyone and everyone in the LSU community,” said Trochesset. “Once you decide that you want to participate in a program, you are a member of Volunteer LSU.”From pressure washing public school buildings to cleaning up after Ike in Galveston, Texas, Volunteer LSU is successfully achieving its mission to have innovative community service projects this year.One of the biggest service events Volunteer LSU has taken the leadership of in its short existence is Community Bound, which takes place the Saturday before the fall semester begins. Community Bound focuses on serving the needs of East Baton Rouge Parish Schools. In 2008, Community Bound’s 300 volunteers helped clean, paint and beautify 10 East Baton Rouge public schools. Within the program, a team of faculty and staff serve as site supervisors, and a team of upperclassmen serves as leaders for the day while first years and other incoming students participate as the volunteers. “All the schools were very satisfied with what we did, and we made major improvements for the schools that really needed help,” said Rhea. “That being my first experience with Volunteer LSU as a leader was really rewarding and set a great tone for the year.”The 2008 fall service project sponsored by Volunteer LSU teamed up with BREC, the Recreation and Park Commission for the East Baton Rouge Parish, and took 80 volunteers to help clean up Baton Rouge parks after Gustav, said Trochesset. “We painted one mile of fence,” Trochesset said. “BREC had been so focused on restoring parks after the hurricane, and we helped with the small things they couldn’t get to. It’s always good to walk away from a project, see the result and feel good about it, knowing we made a difference.”Volunteer LSU is split two ways, said Trochesset. One half, the executive board, oversees the big picture and plans the big events like Community Bound. The other half is made up of the five focus areas. These focus areas were picked by the founders and are based on where the most help was needed in the community.This spring, Volunteer LSU has two more major projects in addition to the smaller projects headed by the five different focus areas. The first is called Service on the Shore: Galveston, which will take 40 to 50 volunteers to Galveston, Texas, from March 6 to 8 to help clean up the debris and devastation left by Hurricane Ike. “Louisiana has received so much help from other states and citizens from around the country during its hurricane troubles that it will be nice to give back,” said Rhea. “Texas has helped us a lot. We’re going to take vans and do some rebuilding and some gutting.”Through this project, Rhea and Trochesset plan to shed light on the troubles people are still facing from Hurricane Ike.The second major service event this spring will be a project with the Mid-City Redevelopment Alliance in which volunteers go to a part of Mid-City Baton Rouge to help renovate homes and “make them more livable,” according to Rhea. “You don’t have to be a   member of a specific service organization to volunteer,” said Michelle Lowery Eldredge, associate director of Campus Life.  Applications to apply for Service on the Shore: Galveston are on the Volunteer LSU Web site and in room 304 of the Student Union.
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Contact Mary Walker Baus at [email protected]