This past Saturday, March 28, was Longwood University’s annual day of service, called The Big Event. As the days led up to the event, all around campus, people were encouraged to “be a part of something great.”
The event started early in the morning, at 9:00 a.m., and participants who did not register before the event, could arrive and register on site. Also in the morning, the participants found their job site leaders and teams, as well as grabbed a special Big Event t-shirt. In addition to the t-shirt give-a-way, there were also special raffle prizes, sponsored by local businesses.
Junior Big Event executive board member, Heui Nguyen, said “We have out special log sleeve shirts for the first 50 people who signed up. We also did raffles and gave away gift cards, including Buffalo Wild Wings cards, Wal-Mart cards and more.”
But despite the rain and cold weather that plagued the day, over 300 people signed up for the event this year. During The Big Event, all volunteers are assigned to different places in the community, to help people outside of Longwood, by doing yard work, picking up garbage and doing other service projects to help make a difference.
Junior Big Event committee member, Alex Pham said, “Overall, I didn't realize how much work was required for this whole Big Event to happen, so I do appreciate all the people that are part of all the committees. On the day of the event, I was a zone supervisor, so my job was to drive around to the sites I was assigned to, make sure everyone was there, doing work and see if they needed anything from Longwood.”
While the day of service was going on, job site leaders led their assigned teams at each site and zone leaders drove around to each site to check on people. The Big Event ended at 2:00 p.m., with many students feeling a sense of satisfaction because of their contribution.
Pham said, “After the day of the Big Event, I felt good! I felt that even though the Big Event was one day, we all made a difference as a team (school). It just makes me think, how much more of a difference would it make if we did this twice a year? The whole experience was an amazing opportunity that helps change the community as a whole, and I feel that everyone should do it next year!”
All job sites for The Big Event were within a ten-mile radius. Leading up to the event, job sites could be referred, were called and also people could be called in to The Big Event office or the Student Government Association (SGA) office.
Bradtke said, “We set up and organized a lot of job sites and prepared a head of time, to have it organized by the day before. We also went out and bought and organized the tools for each job site and let everything else fall in place. We had been working for a while and knew what to expect.”
Longwood’s Big Event started in 2009, and has grown significantly since. The event was planned by The Big Event executive board and sponsored by the SGA.
Junior and director of jobs for The Big Event, Sam Bradtke said, “It was definitely a successful event. We all worked really hard to get it together and we had a great team. We did a lot of work and really tried to push students to get involved with The Big Event.”
Gibson Hawk, cuts up roots to a stump at a volunteer site in the Farmville Community during The Big Event.
Mark Barham, a Longwood volunteer, hammers away during the 2015 Big Event. He was one of many students that came out to help the Farmville community with various tasks.
McKenzie Carlson cleans leaves out of the gutters of a residents home during The Big Event. Students participated in volunteer work at different sites located throughout the Farmville community on Sat. March 28th.
Danielle Whitehurst grabs some paper towels to help clean the windows of a Farmville resident’s home during The Big Event that was held on Sat. March 28th around Farmville, VA.
