UCLA Students Mentor Middle School Students During UCLA Volunteer Day

On Sept. 29, UCLA second year student Jessica Doumit led a team of UCLA freshman students to visit a Seventh grade classroom at Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies (SOCES) to engage the students in a range of mentorship, college preparation and inspirational interactive activities.

And 7,297 other UCLA students (Bruins) joined her and her team.

As a part of freshmen orientation week, all UCLA freshmen and new transfer students participate in a day of service. This year, during UCLA’s sixth annual Volunteer Day, these 7,300 volunteers blanketed Los Angeles County, working in more than 40 locations and providing the equivalent of more than $900,000 worth of work on projects at schools, veterans’ sites, shelters, senior centers, parks, food banks and neighborhood centers. It is the one of the nation’s largest volunteer projects, and the largest community participation event for new students.

At 10 am, 100 Bruin volunteers wearing matching blue and gold T-shirts poured off of two school buses onto the campus of SOCES, listened to instructions from Project Leader Michael Chang - an alumnus of UCLA and current president of the 14,000-member UCLA Law Alumni Association, along with his daughter Alyssa Chang, who founded the non-profit organization Studio City Youth Chamber of Commerce, and his task captains - and immediately set to work in multiple classrooms of students grades 6-8.

SOCES is the largest magnet school in the Los Angeles Unified School District, with a student body of 2100 in the grades 4-12. All students who attend SOCES must apply through an application which is published annually through the Office of Student Integration. The student body, by court order, is integrated with a 60% combined minority and 40% Anglo student population.

Having commenced in 2009, the first five years of UCLA Volunteer Day involved a combined 30,000-plus Bruins at 163 different community partner sites in all 15 city council districts and five county supervisorial districts in Los Angeles. Representatives from Congressman Brad Sherman’s office, and LAUSD board member Tamar Galatzan’s offices were on hand to present awards to the volunteers and to the administration at SOCES. The Congressional Appreciation Award was personally presented to Principal Judith Hernandez, and to Assistant Principal Mari-Ann Aguilar.

Much to the surprise and excitement of the Bruin volunteers, the SOCES students sent, that very afternoon, a package of personalized, hand-written thank you letters to the volunteers. In the words of volunteer Jessica Doumit, who majors in International Development, “This is so so so very very very amazing, wonderful, beautiful and all these letters made my week! I am so touched and could not be more grateful to have been assigned to SOCES for Volunteer Day. Thank you to everyone who helped make this day happen.”

Click here to see photos from the event.