Stuff got done around Langley on Oct. 14 when hundreds of Trinity Western University students did volunteer labour around the community.
“We had just over 650 students out on Saturday, serving at more than 80 job sites,” noted Peter Woekel, TWU’s coordinator of Local Outreach, Volunteering, and Evangelism
The annual Workday event sees students fan out to provide free help for almost any task, rain or shine.
There’s always a few jobs with single parents, people with health difficulties, and others who simply need some help getting some cleaning done, yard work done, painting, small construction projects, helping with moving, and that sort of thing.
But the bulk of the work is done for seniors.
“A lot of the work we do for the Workday is with older individuals that have a hard time managing cleaning, gardening, and other everyday tasks. The senior community can often be a very isolated one. One of our main goals with the Workday is to serve the elderly community through both practical serve and a friendly afternoon together with people who don’t always have a close community around them,” Woekel said.
The students also made their way to some sites to help community groups.
“This year we also made a big push to partner with local community service organizations,” he said. This year for the Workday students were able to help at the Langley Association for Community Living, the Cloverdale Community Kitchen [a local meal provider for low-income individuals], the Langley Centennial Museum, the Langley Memorial Hospital Auxiliary, the Langley chapter of the Canadian Special Olympics, and the Wagner Hills Rehabilitation Facility.
“We probably had a total of about 100 students at various community support facilities,” he added. “There’s a lot of local organizations supporting the community in some really incredible ways, and I’m really excited to continue expanding the ways we can help those organizations in their work.”
There’s still more help through the TWU programs at times other than the autumn Workday.
“We’ll continue the work throughout the rest of the semester, with another 75 or so students doing one-time service projects,” Woekel explained. “We also have a group of about five students that goes out each week throughout the year to do service projects.”
