Converse College Participates in Seventh Annual Community Service Initiative
Hundreds of students from Spartanburg’s six colleges and universities came together to make Spartanburg a better place this spring, as they participated in the “CSI: CollegeTown Service Initiative,” providing services to about a dozen service agencies around the community. It was the seventh service initiative undertaken by students through CollegeTown; the first in 2004 involved cleaning up Lawson’s Fork Creek.
This year, students participated in groups of varying sizes to provide much-needed services to a variety of Spartanburg service agencies and neighborhoods. “What starts out as a few spring-time Saturday hours of old-fashioned hard work often becomes a lifelong commitment to serving their community. The young and returning adult students enrolled at any one of the six Spartanburg institutions are in the process of building or improving their lives, which has a direct impact on the future of our community. We hope that the experience at the CSI event, in some small way, lent itself to a lifetime of service in their community—wherever they eventually call home. Hopefully, that will be right here in Spartanburg,” says CollegeTown events committee chairperson Leslie Blackwell.
The agencies and/or locations where students worked included:
• Born Learning Trail
• Wofford Street
• Hatcher Garden
• SPACE
• Spartanburg Children’s Shelter
• Habitat for Humanity
• Charles Lea Center
• Ellen Hines Girls Home
• Cinderella Project
• The Piedmont Blood Center
• Northwest Recreation Center
• Clifton Cemetery
• Fuller Center for Housing
• Christmas in Action
• And several downtown neighborhoods, helping with graffiti cleanup.
CSI is a project of the CollegeTown consortium, a collaboration of the institutions of higher education in Spartanburg County – Converse College, Sherman College of Chiropractic, Spartanburg Methodist College, Spartanburg Community College, the University of South Carolina Upstate, Wofford College and the City of Spartanburg.