Buenafication Day Provides a Record 7,500 Hours of Service

May 8, 2015

An estimated 3,500 faculty, staff, college students and students from Storm Lake Community School District (SLCSD) participated in Buena Vista University's (BVU) 102nd annual Buenafication Day on April 30, contributing 7,500 hours of community service.

"This Buenafication Day was the largest and most successful we have ever had," said Dr. Ashley Farmer-Hanson, assistant dean for student life and director of civic engagement at BVU. "A lot of people put in an enormous amount of time setting up service sites, coordinating volunteers and taking time out of their day to give back to the community that we all love so much. It is easy to say that we want students to be committed to their community and to be active citizens, but to actually put that into practice and have early childhood students through college students volunteering is incredible."

According to Farmer-Hanson, each volunteer hour is estimated to be worth $23.07 by the Independent Sector, so it is estimated that the day's community service was an investment of $173,025 in the Storm Lake Community.

This year, approximately 59 BVU departments, student organizations, athletic teams and SLCSD groups volunteered service at 58 locations on campus and throughout the Storm Lake community, which included spring clean-up projects, landscaping, washing vehicles for the fire and police departments, writing cards for Children's Miracle Network and spending time at the TLC Animal Shelter and Methodist Manor Retirement Community.

BVU Against Poverty put together care packages for First Aid by packing rice meals. The group packaged 5,550 meals within two hours, with more supplies to be packaged at a later date. These packages will be provided to families in the Storm Lake area. Many students also contributed to the Sole Hope project where patterns are cut out from jeans and milk cartons and shipped abroad. They are later combined to create shoes for those in need, decreasing the rate of foot diseases primarily caused by jiggers.

BVU's Association Computing Machinery club brought their Partners In Excellence fourth grade class to campus where they participated in team competitions during the opening ceremonies, learned about computer coding and joined the rest of the SLCSD in volunteering. BVU athletic teams and organizations then visited the after school program where they painted flower pots, competed in soccer, basketball and Giant Jenga games, played in gigantic inflatable balls with the BVU wrestling team and much more. "It's great to see young people of all ages work together to give back to their community," said SLCSD superintendent Dr. Carl Turner. "We appreciate BVU giving our students the opportunity to participate with their students in Buenafication Day."