My family taught me that it’s essential to give back to the community that you live in. Back home, my family and I used to offer a yearly brunch to Army members who risk their lives to keep us safe, volunteered to teach English and gave to charity whenever we could. Although I’m now thousands of miles away from my family, I want to continue the tradition of community service while I live in Syracuse.

Being a new student this semester, I did not have the connections to learn about the community service that I could do within the city of Syracuse, so I turned to Google. When I searched “off-campus community service” in the search bar on Syracuse University’s website, no easy-commitment volunteer opportunities appeared.

There are opportunities to help the Syracuse community within the university with groups such as SU Literary Corps, Engineering Ambassadors and other opportunities within the Shaw Center, but SU’s website does not mention off-campus opportunities that aren’t run by SU employees and have flexible time commitments.

Additionally, some classes at SU require undergraduates to do community service. In PST 101, I was asked to do some community service hours for a nonprofit organization that wasn’t run by the university, and we received a list of organizations that the professor researched. I volunteer weekly at La Casita Cultural Center, which is located on Syracuse’s Near Westside and aims to bridge Latino communities at the university and central New York area. After speaking with the executive director, Teresita Paniagua, we noticed that not a lot of students were informed about La Casita because of the lack of publicity it receives within SU.

According to Paniagua, paid advertisements with organizations such as The Daily Orange are “expensive and we have extremely limited resources.” Therefore the organization has to reach campus audiences in other ways, such as through campus organizations including La Lucha, the Puerto Rican Student Association and fraternities and sororities within the National Association of Latino Fraternal Organizations.

La Casita also relies on editorial content on social media and published in Syracuse University News releases that highlight students who have contributed to the organization’s programs. “I think it would be great if more of those stories could reach our campus communities and maybe inspire others,” Paniagua said.

The main problem with these ways of promoting off-campus organizations is they are not reaching enough students. Many students have to go out of their way to find information about La Casita and other off-campus organizations.

For La Casita, there is one exception to this rule, and that is Latino/Hispanic Heritage month. Within this month, “it feels like everyone is looking at us, and we have reporters both from outside and within the university interviewing us and promoting La Casita,” Paniagua said.

Paniagua said something that affected me greatly: “Termina heritage month y nos volvemos invisibles el resto del año.” (“Heritage month ends and we become invisible to the community the rest of the year.”) It is very sad to think that the only time when there is no struggle to promote La Casita is within heritage month, then that whole progress is thrown away once the spotlight isn’t on the Latino community.

Fortunately for the community, close to 200 students have joined La Casita this last school term, which is more than previous years, Paniagua said. It is definitely an improvement from the COVID-19 driven 2020 and 2021 after most things on campus went virtual.

La Casita does have the advantage of being a co-curricular unit of SU. Community-based programs and activities are a major draw for students, though transportation to La Casita is an issue for many students, Paniagua said. In any case, although La Casita struggles with publicity within the SU community, it is still part of the SU community. Imagine off-campus volunteer opportunities that don’t have ties to the university.

SU students receive daily emails with information about programs, alumni, internship opportunities and work opportunities, but I have never seen an email that mentions a way to help the Syracuse community through an off-campus, nonprofit organization. The university should also send students emails about ways to volunteer in the Syracuse community through nonprofit organizations, even if those organizations are not tied to SU.

If students don’t have access to this information, they might not spend their time helping our community — not because they don’t want to, but because they don’t know about opportunities to help. If the university publicized off-campus organizations, students would likely volunteer, and the community would receive more much needed help.

Daniela Dorado is a junior Creative Writing major. Her column appears bi-weekly and she can be reached at ddorado@syr.edu.

Published on March 27, 2022 at 10:28 pm