250 Concordia-Chicago Freshmen Participate in Service Day

Submitted by Concordia University Chicago.

As part of Concordia University Chicago’s freshman experience, more than 250 new students recently participated in a day of service. The event, which kicked off the school year, connected student volunteers with organizations and agencies throughout the Chicago area.

At Feed My Starving Children, an organization in Libertyville that packages food in bulk to send to impoverished countries, CUC students packed 143 boxes for children in Haiti, equal to 5,148 meals. Another group of students worked with the Park District of Oak Park to help with landscaping, where they placed and spread a total of 240 cubic yards of mulch in four local parks.

Other students volunteered at Little Angels, a home for disabled children and young adults in Elgin; Lutheran Home, a senior living facility in Arlington Heights; and at Phil’s Friends in Roselle, which provides services and support to people affected by cancer. Several groups of students stayed on campus to work on outdoor projects, and to make fleece tie blankets and get-well cards for Phil’s Friends. A number of upperclassmen, faculty and staff joined the freshmen students for the service day as well.

“Service is a primary tenet of our university mission,” said Deaconess Betsy Karkan, university deaconess at Concordia-Chicago. Karkan was one of the main organizers of the service day event. “As a faith-based university, we have a 151-year history of serving Christ by serving our neighbors.”

Earlier in 2015, Concordia University Chicago was named to the U.S. President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll for the sixth time since the program’s inception in 2006. During the 2013-2014 school year, approximately 59 percent of CUC students gave back to the community through 11,426 service hours.