NSU offers many opportunities for students to give back to their community. The Office of Student Leadership and Civic Engagement offers the Sharks and Service program, a series of trips, which students can sign up to attend and serve their community over the course of a week or weekend. However, this year, Sharks and Service is adjusting their format because of the pandemic.
In the past, Sharks and Service allowed groups of students to travel locally, nationally and internationally to learn about and assist in service surrounding social issues. However, with COVID-19 restrictions in place, group travel is suspended. As students returned to school, the leaders of Sharks and Service were still determined to provide opportunities for students to give back to their community in a meaningful way.
Sharks and Service is offering a few experiences per semester that students can sign up to attend from either their home or in person. According to Concetta D’Alessio, the assistant director of the Office of Student Leadership and Engagement, oversees Sharks and Service, they are more of an experience instead of a single trip, and each experience is made up of three mini activities.
“The experiences we’re offering this semester are focusing on disabilities and COVID-19 as it relates to healthcare. Participants will go through three mini sessions, which can be attended in person or through Zoom. We’re going to have community partners that join us virtually in those experiences as well,” said D’Alessio.
After attending two mini sessions, students can choose from a number of different ways to complete their service experience. The different options to complete the service experience depend on the subject that the experience is focused on.
“For example, for our experience focusing on disabilities, students can work together to assemble mental health kits for other students or they can make sensory boards for those who might have seeing challenges or things like that. Even if a student is off campus, we still plan on providing them the tools and resources to complete the project,” said D’Alessio.
Not only will students be able to give back to their community and serve their peers, but if they attend all three mini sessions, they will receive an ExEL credit for their work.
While D’Alessio hopes that Sharks and Service will return to being an experience that can bring students to new places to learn about social issues, she and the Sharks and Service site leaders have worked hard to develop a program where students can still give back to their community while staying safe and socially distanced.
“We came up with this Sharks and Service 2.0 hybrid experience, which I would say still stays pretty true to our values: service, education, leadership and community,” said D’Alessio.
Current and future experiences for Sharks and Service can be found on SharkHub, but spots are filling up quickly according to D’Alessio. Students can RSVP for experiences up until the date they are scheduled and can find all of the information for the sessions on the SharkHub page for each respective experience.
“While our fall trips are filling up quickly, students should be on the lookout for four more experiences next semester. The four areas focus on education, global climate change, hunger and homelessness and immigrant youth. These experiences will all happen between January and April next semester. If students aren’t able to sign up for any this semester, just be sure to be on the lookout for those next four,” said D’Alessio.
