STU Cares Puts STUdents Back into the Community to Lend Helping Hands

After a fully virtual year, this year’s STU Cares Day of Action provided STUdents with virtual and in-person opportunities to learn about and lend a hand to local organizations in Fredericton.

STUdents from all years of study participated in the day-long event which is as much about creating local change as it is building meaningful connections among peers who share a passion for helping. 

"It's a great and purposeful opportunity!"

Fourth-year STUdent Caitlyn Levesque-Brown, from Cape Breton, NS, spent her STU Cares Day with L’Arche.

L’Arche celebrates people with intellectual disabilities and builds support networks around them. They go beyond meeting people's basic needs and create mutual relations and feelings of belonging. L’Arche aims to balance four dimensions: help and care, community life, spiritual life, and awareness of our societies. The Fredericton Project is part of a global initiative than includes 149 L’Arche communities and 14 projects in 37 countries around the world.
 

“I decided to participate in STU Cares as it gives me a chance to give back to my community and meet other students with the same drive to make a better future,” Levesque-Brown said. “This was my second STU Cares, and I loved every minute!”
 

STUdents were tasked with brainstorming ideas to help promote the project to the community and propose ideas for fundraising. They also heard from families who benefited from the project’s work.

“By volunteering with this organization, I gained the knowledge to share L’Arche with those around me, as well as join in on future community activities,” Levesque-Brown said.

“I feel more fulfilled and humbled. STU Cares is a wonderful initiative and I suggest everyone try to attend at least one of these days during their time at STU. It's a great and purposeful opportunity!”

"Part of the community."

First-year STUdent Marion Govednik, originally from Los Angeles, California, USA, had a similarly positive experience at STU Cares. She also wanted to participate in STU Cares to get to know her new home.

“I had only been in Fredericton for a few weeks,” she said. “I have been trying to understand the community and the city in any way I can.”

Govednik spent the day at the Hayes Farm.

Hayes Farm is a project led by the local non-profit organization New Brunswick Community Harvest Gardens which aims to mobilize New Brunswickers toward a resilient and thriving food system. The local organization seeks to provide skills, expertise, and support to practice human-scale regenerative agriculture. Their model seeks to address local food security, financial responsibility, personal and spiritual fulfillment for individuals, and food production in the local community. They do this in the spirit of honouring Indigenous culture and food ways, integrative principles of land-based learning, and reconnection.

STUdent volunteers helped decorate for an event being hosted by the organization and worked in the garden.

“I learned about their importance to the environment, like how you can use dry sunflowers, wheat, and corn to fertilize the soil for the next growing season. It is all a cycle, and the plants are never wasted,” Govednik said.

Coming from a large city and a different environment, Govednik said her experience with STU Cares allowed her to immerse herself in her new surroundings in a unique way.

“STU Cares made me feel like I was part of the community. Being a newcomer, it has been a little difficult trying to adapt to this new environment and understand different parts of the city. This event helped me understand more about the environment around me, more about the people in the Fredericton community and at STU.”

STU Experiential Learning and Community Partners

STU Cares Day of Action is organized by STU’s Office of Experiential Learning and Community Engagement. The event would not be possible without this year's amazing community partners including New Brunswick Community Harvest Gardens - Hayes Farm, L'Arche Fredericton, the Multicultural Association of Fredericton, Meals on Wheels of Fredericton, Sexual Violence New Brunswick, and United Way of Central NB. 
 

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This experiential learning opportunity was made possible thanks to St. Thomas University's partnership with the FutureNB initiative.