Day of Service

Day of Service is an annual event hosted by Campus Life that connects students with St. Louis through service to the community.

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Service opportunities

Green Center (Off-Campus, 10-12 pm)

The Green Center is an arts and environmental education organization in University City dedicated to helping people connect with the natural world through hands-on experiences, restoring native habitats, and encouraging artistic expression inspired by nature. We will be helping with native habitat restoration, which will involve clearing non-native vegetation and planting native plant species. 

Great Rivers Greenway/Open Space STL (Off-Campus, 9-11 am)

Great Rivers Greenway is an environmental and economic develop organization whose mission is to make the St. Louis region a more vibrant place to live, work and play by developing a regional network of greenways. They are a public agency created by a vote of the people in St. Louis City, St. Louis County and St. Charles County in the year 2000 to develop a sales tax dedicated to parks and greenways. This allows them to collaborate with partners and communities to build, care for, and bring to life a network of greenways (140 miles and counting!), creating healthy habitats and watersheds along the way. Volunteers will be cleaning areas along the Mississippi Greenway and River, near the Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing memorial. This is part of a larger, region wide Confluence Trash Bash event. 

Black Power Blueprint (Off-Campus, 9-11 am)

Black Power Blueprint is a joint initiative of the African People’s Education and Defense Fund (APEDF) and Black Star Industries (BSI), transforming North St. Louis through renovation, economic development and political power by and for the black community. We will be helping with turning a community garden into a larger scale community farm by helping to spread woodchips and by planting, weeding, and tending to existing plants. 

SHED (Off-Campus, Time TBA)

SHED (Sustainable Housing and Equitable Development) is a non-profit focused on ensuring safe, affordable housing for the elderly, disabled, and veterans in University City. Their work includes providing minor home repairs and assistance with other home maintenance tasks such as cleaning gutters and doing yardwork. They have also have programming for youth to support their career development in the trades, a home buyer education program, a home building program where they seek to purchase vacant lots in the 3rd ward and construct single-family homes that will be sold to first-time, low-to-moderate income buyers.  

St. Joseph’s Housing Initiative (Off-Campus, Time TBA)

The St. Joseph Housing Initiative is a non-profit in the city of St. Louis whose mission is to create vibrant communities through affordable quality housing where low and moderate income families can thrive, prosper, and build wealth. They do this by buying vacant and problem properties, renovating them, and then selling them at below market value to low and moderate income  first-time home owners. They also provide all new homeowners with robust support services for first time homeowners, including a Homeowner Readiness Academy, to ensure that they will be successful and thrive in their new home. 

Academy/Sherman Park Community Garden (Off-Campus, 10-12 pm)

The Academy/Sherman Park Community Garden has been a staple of the community for over 20 years, starting as a small effort to reclaim access to healthy, homegrown food. It has since grown from six beds to twenty-five and serves a place where folks in the community come to find inspiration, reflect, and build connections. It has also gained support from local community organizations like Seed St. Louis and Brightside STL. We will be assisting with garden maintenance.  

AmeriCorps St. Louis (Off-Campus, Time TBA)

AmeriCorps St. Louis is an AmeriCorps programmed based in St. Louis whose mission is to enhance the professional skills and life-long service ethic of those who serve; to respond to critical unmet needs in the areas of emergency response and environmental conservation; to leverage service of volunteers; and to build the capacity for their partnering agencies and communities they serve. They focus on serving vulnerable populations, striving to address the needs of those least served, last served, and never served. We will be assisting them with tornado recovery efforts in north St. Louis, as the community continues to recover from last year’s tornado. 

Peter & Paul (On-Campus, Time TBA)

We will be putting together care packages for those serviced by Peter and Paul Community Services. In addition to the items that will go into the care packages, we will also be making handwritten cards with positive messages for the recipients, as well as a handmade craft. 

Residential Life (On-Campus, 10-12 pm)

We’ll be working on two main projects. The first is care packages for the unhoused, which will include handwritten cards with positive messages for the recipients. The second will be no sew blankets and toys for local area animal shelters.