O-Week ends with outreach
Class of 2015 wraps up week of activities with more than 2,000 hours of community service

BY AMY HODGES
Rice News staff

Sir Winston Churchill once said, ”We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”

After nearly a week of orientation activities, Rice’s newest Owls helped make their lives by contributing more than 2,000 hours of community service valued at $43,120 as part of the university’s Outreach Day last Saturday.

Outreach Day is sponsored annually by Rice’s Community Involvement Center (CIC) and seeks to enable students to make a positive impact on the Houston community by engaging them in volunteer opportunities throughout the city.

”It’s a great opportunity for our group of incoming students to do a service project together,” said Wiess College freshman Navaneeth Ravindranath, who spent Outreach Day working at a local hostel. ”It really helps build community spirit and give back to the greater community.”

Although Ravindranath is only a freshman, he’s already taken advantage of volunteer opportunities as part of the university’s Urban Immersion program and plans to continue his service involvement throughout his college career.

”Outreach Day sets the stage for service of all kinds,” CIC Director Mac Griswold said. ”Rice students involve themselves in all kinds of different activities — alternative spring breaks, annual days of service, campus organizations and more. For most of our students, this is their first introduction to service opportunities in Houston.

Griswold said his office seeks to establish connections between charitable organizations and students early in their college careers.

”Many of our students have previous volunteer experience but don’t have any connections to Houston organizations,” Griswold said. ”The program allows them to establish relationships with groups similar to ones they’ve served in the past.”

It’s not difficult for students to connect with an organization, thanks to the diverse mix of Outreach Day participants. The groups involved represent a combination of long-term community partners and new organizations. ”Every year, we seek to build new relationships with nonprofits in the Houston community,” Griswold said.

One of the organizations new to this year’s day of service was Hostelling International (HI), founded in 1934 to promote international understanding of the world and its people through hostelling. Rice students spent the day assisting with furniture construction and landscaping projects at the Morty Rich Hostel, set to open later this month in Houston’s Montrose neighborhood.

The new hostel is more than just another nonprofit project; it has a direct connection to the Rice community. The hostel will serve as a memorial to its namesake and benefactor, Morty Rich, a 1973 Rice alum and native Houstonian who died in a plane crash in 1993. An active hosteller, Rich led travel groups throughout the world and served as a volunteer and board member for the local and national boards of HI-USA.

Douglas Markham, president of the local HI-USA council, knew Rich personally and said that he couldn’t think of a better way to honor his memory.

”He was passionate about hostelling, because of the opportunity to bring people together and help them see different cultures and ways of living,” Markham said. ”He believed it was a peace-building experience, and thought that if people had the opportunity to see more of the world, they would be less fearful of people who weren’t like them.”

HI was just one of 20 organizations to benefit during Rice’s Outreach Day. Although the annual service day is one of the few nonmandatory events during O-Week, Griswold said, he is consistently amazed at how many students take time out of their schedules to volunteer. This year nearly half of the incoming class — 478 students — participated in Outreach Day activities.

”It’s amazing that students are willing to give so freely of their time, especially after a full week of events,” Griswold said. ”I think it really speaks to the Rice culture and the character of our students.”

Rice upperclassmen, faculty and staff assisted the volunteers at the project sites, which included:

AIDS Foundation Houston – Volunteers helped with renovation and assembly of shelving at Stone Soup, the organization’s soup kitchen for HIV-positive individuals.

Alley Theatre and Urban Harvest – Volunteers worked together with theater personnel to build a garden shed for the First Ward Community Garden.

Bering Omega Community Services – Volunteers worked at Omega House, an eight-bed residential hospice where people in the last stages of HIV/AIDS can live their final days in peace and dignity.

Children’s Assessment Center – Volunteers helped with the reorganization of supplies and decorations after the center’s back-to-school party.

City of Houston Health Department – Volunteers helped with a city initiative to bring farmers markets to underserved communities in Houston urban areas.

Crisis Intervention of Houston