In bright yellow shirts, hardworking Boston University students amassed 1,200 community service hours in one day Saturday, as they dispersed themselves throughout the city for the university’s first Day of Service, an event coordinated by the Student Union and the Community Service Center.

The 230 students who pledged their hours as part of the President Robert Brown Community Service Project, a gift for Brown’s April inauguration, donated their time and efforts to various Boston organizations, including Boston Shines, Nuestra Comunidad, Food Bank and MASS Equality.

Volunteers were seen wearing shirts that read “You’re a Good Man, Bobby Brown.”

One of the organizations students volunteered for was Boston Shines, a group dedicated to cleaning up trash outdoors. Many students cleaned up the sidewalks down Commonwealth Avenue, Massachusetts Avenue and Beacon Street.

“President Brown stopped and talked to one of the Boston Shines groups,” Marker said, “and councilor Ross on another one and was talking with them.”

Other groups participated in more behind the scenes community service.

“[MASS Equality] went around and was spreading information about gay marriage and collecting signatures,” Marker said. “They collected over a thousand signatures for gay marriage that they are going to be spending to representatives.

“[Food Bank] was serving food, food that gets donated,” he continued. “They repackaged it so that all of the pre-made dinners would be together, all of the soup would be together. It’s a lot of fun, although we only sent 10 people.”

Student Union President Jon Marker said although almost everything went perfectly, there were some parts of the day that could have been better.

“I wish we would have had a bigger room to start it off with-it was really crowded,” he said. “But I think that helped to show everyone how many people were there, and how much this meant to everybody.”

Marker said because of budget issues early on in programming the day, some plans had to be altered.

“We definitely had to rearrange our original plans,” he said, “but everything we had planned this week, and how we assumed it would play out, worked perfectly as we had predicted.”

College of Communication senior Jess Haskell, who coordinated many aspects of the day from budget to site management, said she was pleased with how things turned out.

“I was so excited about how many people showed up,” she said. “There were so many people representing so many walks of life at BU.”

Cleaning up for Boston Shines around campus, Haskell made sure all volunteers had lunches, transportation and a place to log their hours when they returned.

“One hundred and thirty people logged yesterday,” she said. “We just need to wait for everybody else to log their hours.”

Haskell said she is very confident that the goal of 50,000 community service hours will be reached, although some of the hours may not be logged.

Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences senior Rachel Gaddes participated in cleaning up the Boston area in addition to organizing parts of the day.

“Since [Buildings and Grounds] usually takes care of actual on-campus places, we wanted to hit up areas where off-campus students live,” she said.

Gaddes said the service was well received by many, particularly people who they ran into while cleaning up.

“People were coming up to us on the street and were really curious as to what we were doing,” she said. “We explained the project and we explained President Brown. We definitely got the word out about college students working in the community.”

Gaddes said she would like to see the Day of Service implemented next year to encourage more students to volunteer their time.

“It definitely should be [done again next year],” she said. “I was really impressed with the student turnout- I was just blown away by it. I do a lot in the Community Service Center, and it was just incredible to see so many faces that I’ve never seen before. It would be a wonderful tradition to do every year.”