Southeast Serves is known for creating volunteer opportunities for students in Cape Girardeau, but this is the first opportunity it has presented to students that reaches beyond just the local community.
On Saturday, Southeast Serves will take 20 volunteer students to Longmeadow Rescue Ranch in Union, Missouri. Longmeadow Rescue Ranch is an affiliate organization of the Humane Society of Missouri that takes in neglected and abused animals to rehabilitate them for adoption.
Pamela Avila, graduate assistant for student engagement in the Office of Campus Life and Event Services, is the coordinator of the service trip. She began her graduate assistant position at the start of the fall 2015 semester.
"I actually came up with the idea over the summer when I got the GA position," Avila said. "I started researching different ideas just to come up with plans for the semester. I actually saw on Facebook that somebody was volunteering at the Longmeadow Rescue Ranch."
She connected with Linda Chapman, the ranch education and customer service specialist, to plan the trip and learn about what activities the students will be participating in on the day of the trip.
"They'll be painting fences that day that [the ranch] would like us to help with," Avila said. "There is a big storage unit that they need help with re-organizing and setting up for the winter and getting those supplies ready for the winter months. Also, basic things that they do every day like cleaning the stalls for the animals, feeding and refilling water. A lot of them are horses but they also have pigs, goats, ducks and llamas."
Meghan Gerard, sophomore at Southeast, found out about the service trip through her service sorority on campus.
"I'm in Gamma Sigma Sigma, the service sorority, and they had told us about it," Gerard said. "I've heard of Longmeadow Ranch and they do really great things, so I was really excited to be a part of it. I'm sure it's going to provide a lot of team building and things for the real world. I'm just really excited to get some hard work done, and that I was presented this opportunity."
Avila is encouraging the volunteers to fully engage in this opportunity, regardless of their chosen major or career focus.
"I mean how many people can say that they got to work on a farm for a day and help animals?" Avila said. "It's a good chance to maybe get to know people you haven't gotten to know before because we have a wide range of students that have been signing up for the trip. It's not really a once in a lifetime opportunity, but how many times do you get to say that 'I was a part of the first ever service trip?'"
After students spend time working on the ranch and having lunch they are invited to participate in Longmeadow's Wagon Days activities.
"After working in the morning and having lunch then we get to go on a hayride through the ranch," Avila said. "They'll give us a full tour of the ranch and we'll get to meet more of the animals and kind of get more up close and personal with them. That is a really unique aspect of the trip. Not only are we going to be helping and working but we also get to participate in that wagon ride and get a more detailed tour about the ranch."
Avila hopes the students will have a chance to grow their volunteer experience backgrounds whether for personal interest or to meet required community service hours.
"I know from my experience that employers always want to see that you're involved in not only your campus community, but that you're also involved in your community as a whole," Avila said. "I think any kind of volunteering opportunity is great to put on your resume. Specifically for this trip, if someone is into agriculture or even in the pre-vet program, anything like that would obviously correlate to a future job."
If the service trip to Longmeadow is a success, Avila hopes it will be one of many future volunteer opportunities off campus that Southeast Serves can offer to students. Depending on the amount of student interest, she wants to make future opportunities available to a greater number of volunteers.
"Since this is our first one we wanted to keep it at a smaller, more manageable number," Avila said. "Hopefully this will jumpstart the process of creating an alternative spring break. If everything goes well with this then it will just help us, and it will be a learning experience for me to know what it takes to plan a weeklong service trip. Maybe this will bring about new opportunities, or even new agencies or organizations to work with to coordinate that weeklong trip."
