This year’s participation for the Big Event increased in recruitment with 450 volunteers. However, only 325 volunteers showed up for participation at 83 job sites during the day, according to Mary Goggins, director of students for the Big Event.
According to Alex Pham, the co-director of Jobs on the executive board, there were a few walk-ins on the day of the event, which helped with the total number of absences.
This echoed last year when the event had almost 400 students sign up, but had approximately 70-80 students who did not appear to volunteer. This left just over 300 students who followed through with the event.
There was approximately 50 more students who signed up this year from last year with almost double the absence.
Goggins explained that people sign up to volunteer for the event, but some of them don’t follow through, which can be explained based on the fact that alterations need to be made for how many students go to each site.
Goggins is in charge of recruitment and getting students to sign up for the event. Recruitment efforts have been altered over the past few years by requiring the application to be signed up for by individuals rather than whole groups. The individual applicants are then placed randomly throughout different groups, so they aren’t necessarily with people they know.
In terms of this year’s recruitment, the committee members on the Big Event reached out to heads of organizations, tabled at D-hall, attended Greek Sync and had a table at Relay for Life to which they brought iPads and computers. This made it so that people could conveniently fill out the application on the spot.
A recurrent theme both this year and with past years has been faculty homes included on the job sites list.
“Longwood faculty members are not necessarily the majority of those job sites. The Big Event reaches out through town meetings and by Mayor David Whitus sharing some of the Big Event’s information with the town,” said Goggins.
Therefore, faculty members not only hear about the Big Event outside of Longwood but within the campus as well by members promoting the event in their classes, through their faculty advisor Dr. Jake Milne and simply by word of mouth. Milne reaches out to the faculty via email to which faculty can respond if they want students to help with tasks at their homes. This year approximately 10 faculty homes were visited during the event, according to Pham.
In regards to preparing job sites, Goggins explained, the committee talks with each person to see what they would like completed, then one or two members on the committee goes out to survey
the lot to see how big or small the project is. That job site then goes on the list and they mark how many people they need to complete that project while also giving that job site a site leader.
According to Olivia Martin, co-director of Jobs, the Big Event also reaches out to surrounding counties Burkeville and Cumberland for tasks to be completed by students. This year there were four jobs completed in both counties in which five volunteers in total were sent to the two counties. However, the Big Event tries to generally stay in the Farmville area.
Goggins stated, “This year’s event was successful. Almost every volunteer came back with a story of how they were touched and how their experience personally impacted them and what their service meant to the community leaving them with very motivated and in high spirits.”
