Service Opportunities

The University YMCA can accomodate all types of required service hours. Depending on the time of year, types of duties include:

• office work such as preparing mailings
• custodial work such as cleaning or moving furniture and boxes
• archival work such as digitizing media
• event preparation and donation sorting

Our service volunteers are treated with respect and understanding, in accordance with our mission. Those who enjoyed their experience have returned to volunteer again for unrequired hours or have become leaders in our student programs. Listen to Martha's Story:

Martha Webber

Telling Stories: Martha Webber / Alternative Spring Break Volunteer and Graduate Student by UniversityYMCA

Martha Webber, against some major odds, has become both a seminal academic and devoted volunteer. She became co-leader of Alternative Spring Break and her interests shifted both academically and personally towards service learning and civic engagement. Martha got to observe first hand as students encountered the homeless and their own ideas about homelessness on an ASB trip in Washington, DC. She saw them come back to Illinois with changed minds. The Y is a lot of things to a lot of people, but to Martha, it’s a community of action-minded students who are told Yes when they are inspired to start a project or initiate a gathering. In Martha’s experience, the Y offers something very different from the University, and yet appreciates the overlap. This enhancement of student life has existed since the Y’s inception. Opportunities for students to volunteer and think deeply about service continue to change with the needs of the times, and it’s really thanks to students like Martha who recognize the need for theory and practice, service and learning, students and the world around them... to interface, to affect each other.