For some Baker University students, volunteer or community service hours are required.
For others, volunteering is a choice.
“I think it’s important (to volunteer) because going to school at Baker, a lot of us forget that we’re also a part of Baldwin City, a community,” junior Mason Dick said. “I think everybody should try to give back to the city that supports them.”
Students like Dick and juniors Jacob Draisey and Luke Harshfield help the community through the Baldwin City Recreation Commission’s youth soccer teams. The three BU students coach a third-grade and fourth-grade coed soccer team called the Orange Flaming Dragons.
“It’s just a good thing to do,” Draisey said. “It makes you feel good, helps out a lot of people and it’s just goodwill. Good things will happen if you do good things.”
Dick intially began volunteering through the Baldwin City Recreation Commission as a freshman for a class, but he is now employed by the Baldwin City Recreation Commission.
“I initially started out kind of helping little kids’ basketball camps and the leagues, and I did some volleyball camps as well,” Dick said. “Then that kind of funneled over into the summer, where I kind of supervised all the baseball fields and softball fields during the summer.”
The youth team practices every Wednesday and plays games on Saturdays in Baldwin City, DeSoto and Eudora.
“Actually being able to see the kids run around on the field and score and do well; just seeing the work that me, (Harshfield) and (Draisey) have put forth is actually paying off. It’s really cool to see that,” Dick said.
Aside from helping out the Baldwin City community, senior Hakeem Young has also volunteered his time and work by volunteering in the tornado-stricken Joplin, Mo.
“It was an eye opening experience, going to volunteer in a tornado-ridden area,” Young said. “Everybody talks about how it looks after a tornado but until you really experience it, you don’t really get how horrifying it is.”
Young traveled to Joplin for a day with his job at Outback Steakhouse.
He, and other employees of the restaurant replaced the cooks and servers at the Joplin Outback Steakhouse so the staff could go clean up its homes.
Young’s volunteering experience in a disaster-stricken area taught him a valuable life lesson that might not have been learned.
“It changes your whole outlook,” Young said. “I went down there, I had the idea of ‘I have everything
perfect,’ but when you look at everyone else who has it a lot worse than you, you realize how easily your life could be good one day and then the next your life could be completely gone. It just gives you a better outlook on life to think of all the small things you take for granted.”
