The Student Government Association will host “Big Event” on April 11-12.
This nationwide event is a community service project that began 32 years ago at Texas A&M and 95 other national schools have also started participating.
The “Big Event” recently went International spreading to Pakistan, Germany, Italy and Spain. It is a two-day event where students come out and help around the community with simple everyday chores.
UCA will not tend to individual people’s houses this year; they will focus on community places and centers.
“The first day, April 11, is going to be when students can come out and just give back to the UCA community by helping the physical plant with various jobs,”
Kaitlyn Thompson, sophomore vice president, said, “The second day, April 12, is the ‘Big Event’ nationally and that is the day when we [all-involved] can go out into the community and do projects like rake leaves and help someone paint their house.”
Thompson and her committee have planned a weekly agenda that helps them keep all of the planning together to make this event as well known as possible.
This year SGA plans to partner with organizations that are more established in Conway because this event is still small and these organizations can help spread information about it.
Conway City of Hope has committed to participating and the “Big Event” committee will ask seven more community organizations if they would like to participate.
“Our initial goal is to get everyone involved. We want the whole campus to be involved, but of course we’re going to reach out to people that are known for philanthropic events.” Thompson said, “We are going to Greek organizations, campus ministries and an organization called Circle K. There are a lot of organizations that are community service based so we’re going to reach out to them first and then hopefully other students will also register.”
This year is UCA’s first year to participate and SGA hopes to have a large number of participants. The goal of this event is to get as many people as possible to participate and to give thanks to the community.
Everyone on campus is encouraged to register on OrgSync. The deadline is March 31.