More than 1,000 JHU volunteers set to assist Baltimore nonprofits

More than 1,000 Johns Hopkins University students, faculty and staff are set to spend a day helping several dozen of Baltimore's nonprofit organizations.

The university's annual President's Day of Service, now in its fifth year, will take place on Saturday. Volunteers will convene at 11 a.m. for a kickoff celebration at the Ralph S. O'Connor Recreation Center on the Homewood campus. President Ronald J. Daniels will address participants, who will then fan out to 45 locations across the city. Volunteers will plant gardens, clean the harbor, weed vacant lots, and distribute food to the homeless.

"I'm delighted to see how this event has transformed over five years to become a university tradition. Our students, faculty, and staff, in partnership with our neighbors, continue to make a significant impact on our city—block by block, school by school, garden by garden," President Ronald J. Daniels said. "Our hope is that the spirit of this day will carry forward, informing our students' lives and shaping their connections to the places they will call home."

Johns Hopkins Alumni Association chapters in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Seattle, and Hawaii will simultaneously conduct service projects in their cities. The East Baltimore medical campus, including the schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health, held a related community outreach event Oct. 5 that was sponsored by the Student Outreach Resource Center.

In all, 1,250 people registered to volunteer—the highest in the event's history.

Among the city organizations volunteers will assist are the Charm City Clinic, Moveable Feast, C.A.R.E. Community Association, Remington Outreach, the Franciscan Center, Samaritan Women, and Station North Arts and Entertainment Inc.

"We provide both the human capital and the resources for these groups to take care of projects they might not otherwise have been able to," said event organizer Kirsten Bishop, assistant director of the university's Center for Social Concern. "But the people from the university who volunteer honestly feel just as rewarded."

The President's Day of Service is organized by the Johns Hopkins Center for Social Concern and funded by the Johns Hopkins Parents Fund.