Wearing white baseball-style T-shirts with the number 20 on the back to commemorate the anniversary of the Community Service Center, Boston University students volunteered more than 1,800 hours as they scattered around the city for the second annual day of service Saturday.
Topping last year’s total of 230 volunteers, about 300 students came out for the BU Day of Service to volunteer in issue areas including the environment, gender issues and HIV/AIDS.
Coordinated by the CSC and the Student Union, the service initiative aimed to bring students from different groups together to bond over volunteer service.
Volunteer groups varied in size, the largest composed of nearly 100 people who concentrated near campus, in such areas as the Allston clean-up group.
Smaller groups of four to six people traveled across the city to sites such as the Boston Nature Center, a Mattapan organization that provides weekly environmental education programs to Boston elementary schools.
“We have been reaching out [to] different student groups, not just people in the CSC or Student Union,” said CSC Events Manager Maylien Herm, a College of Arts and Sciences senior. “It’s a neat way for people to come together for the service.”
Volunteer Jillian Zingale, a School of Education freshman who worked at the Franklin Zoo, said she and her group of 10 volunteers swept up leaves and garbage around the zoo.
“I was surprised to see a new batch of people I have never seen before,” said Day of Service staff member and College of Communication sophomore Olivia LaRoche. “It is a good reminder that if we keep pushing at it, we will be able to tap a larger amount of kids at the university who are interested in getting involved.”
Students helped many organizations around the city, including the N.I.C.E. Day Care Center in Roxbury, where volunteers painted and cleaned.
“We got a lot more accomplished than I thought we could have,” said N.I.C.E. Day Care Center Director Alice Seldon. “Sometimes, we think big and get things accomplished.”
Last year, students dedicated their service as part of the President Robert Brown Community Service Project, a gift for his April 2006 inauguration.
The service day comes after the Corporation for National and Community Service released an April 16 study that reported a lower percentage of Massachusetts college students perform community service than the national average.
Herm, who said she was initially shocked when she heard of the report, said she understood that it focused on the entire state and not just the Boston area, which she said has an abundance of volunteer opportunities.
“A lot of schools in this city do a lot of service,” she said. “I don’t really know a lot about the rest of the state.
“Boston is a city of giving,” she said. “I’ve never had a problem finding events where people are doing events in the city.”
Staff reporters Angela Marie Latona and Barbara Rodriguez contributed reporting to this article.