Impact Week has been absent from the Syracuse University campus for the past couple semesters, but this year Student Association Director of Student Engagement Alejandra Avina is bringing it back in a different way.

Taking it a step further from community service, Avina wants the SU community to truly define what it means to make an impact.

Beginning this week, Avina and others who have planned Impact Week will try to do just that. Impact Week, hosted by SA and the Residence Hall Association, is a weeklong movement where different groups and organizations come together to dissolve boundaries and work together, according to the event’s VolunteerSpot page. Throughout the week, numerous community events, panels and workshops will take place.

Avina, working alongside Nedda Sarshar, director of civic engagement for RHA, wanted to make Impact Week bigger this year than in previous years. With a broader vision in mind, Avina said the groups made a list of nonprofits to collaborate with and began reaching out to people.

Avina said they brought back Impact Week for this week in particular because there is a lot happening throughout the week allowing students to dedicate themselves to the community. Health and Wellness Week and SA elections also take place this week, as well as The Cuse Conference on Sunday.

Avina said Impact Week is not about putting in community service hours and getting a pat on the back, but instead figuring out how to collaborate within the community.

“I want to bring people together,” she said.

For this year’s Impact Week, more than just community service projects will be taking place.

Community events begin on Tuesday, which include serving breakfast at the Samaritan Center in the morning, followed by food sorting and packaging for the Food Bank of Central New York and Salvation Army Daycare volunteering, according to the VolunteerSpot page.

Phi Sigma Pi will be hosting a nonprofit panel on Wednesday, where nonprofit leaders and SU students will gather to discuss problems that exist in the Syracuse community, according to the event’s Facebook page.

Thursday’s community events include packaging food for Meals on Wheels and Feed My Starving Children, according to the volunteer page. Volunteering at Danforth Middle School, packaging and serving food at The Temple Concord food pantry and painting at the Rescue Mission will take place on Friday.

An Earth Day event at the Baltimore Woods Nature Center follows on Saturday, according to the VolunteerSpot page.

Ending the week on Sunday will be The Cuse Conference — an event SA President Boris Gresely said is an opportunity to bridge the gap between administration and students.

Gresely said back in the 1960s, university staff used the Pinebrook Conference for student leaders and administration to meet and discuss current issues.

Drawing upon that idea, The Cuse Conference will be a day of conversation on action-areas, or the main issues and challenges students face regularly, according to The Cuse Conference website. The Cuse Conference will take place on Sunday from 1–6 p.m. in the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium.

Published on April 12, 2015 at 7:45 pm

Contact William: wrnorris@syr.edu