Greater than half of UT college students take part in volunteering

AUSTIN, Texas — According to the University of Texas, greater than 60% of its college students take part in volunteer actions. New analysis exhibits the impression their volunteer work has on the Austin neighborhood.

UT college students who spend their free time volunteering assist the neighborhood in quite a lot of methods, whether or not it’s going to animal shelters, cleansing native parks or distributing meals. 

Caroline Wheir, a junior at UT, assisted with distributing meals from the Central Texas Food Bank to fellow college students on Saturday.

The UT Outpost holds giant, outside meals distribution occasions like this about 3 times a 12 months. (Spectrum News 1/Geraldine Torrellas-Piñero)

“About 25% of the community is food insecure, so to try to help mitigate that kind of fear that a lot of students have, we are a resource on campus to help out with students who need the food pantry,” Wheir mentioned.

She volunteered about 50 hours on the UT Outpost as a freshman, then took on her present function as volunteer coordinator throughout her sophomore 12 months.

“Volunteering is incredibly important,” Wheir mentioned. “I heard about this opportunity, I decided to go for it and had a really fun time talking with a bunch of people that were volunteering with me, getting to see the positive impact that it had on the community and helping students that needed the resources that we offered.”

According to new analysis from the college, college students volunteer more than 5 million hours locally yearly. It’s estimated this has an annual financial impression of virtually $102 million.

“It’s really an amazing impact on, not only on our students lives for the experiences they get, but for the local Austin community,” mentioned John Dalton, the vice chairman of the Division of Student Affairs at UT. “Makes me feel great going through the report and realizing our students are doing such amazing things.”

Like providing a serving to hand to different college students so that they have one much less factor to fret about.

“Just know that I’m helping out in some way is incredibly rewarding to know that I can do that for people,” Wheir mentioned.