On Friday, U of T’ers gave a little back to the community. Eight-hundred students of all years and programs volunteered at 42 different agencies around Toronto for U of T’s annual community service program Outreach. This was the event’s second year, and the students involved called it a complete success.

I began by visiting the students volunteering at the Mon Sheong Home for the Aged on D’arcy Street. I found students there repainting a fence on the outside deck of the home, and looking forward to working personally with the residents later in the day.

Ahmad Khan, a third year Biophysics major, was enthusiastic about volunteering on the beautiful summer day.

“I guess we spend so much time in the academic realm of things that we should do some social work just to complement our academic experience,” mused Khan, who participated last year as well.

“It’s good to help out the community, to give back something.”

I made my way up McCaul Street to see what was going on at the Salvation Army Hope Shelter. There, students were supposed to serve a barbeque lunch to some 110 men staying at the shelter, but lunchtime came and went without a sign of the outreachers, much to the distress of the shelter staff. “This was going to be the last barbeque, and we were going to hold it over the long weekend, but we decided to take advantage of U of T’s outreach and hold it today,” said shelter chaplain and volunteer coordinator Klaus Dimytruk.

Will this affect relations with U of T in the future?

“No, no. I understand that things happen. I’m not putting the blame on anyone, we’ll make the best of the situation,” he said. At least there were no hard feelings, but why didn’t the students show up?

Dawn Britton, coordinator of Out- reach at the Centre for Community Partnership, said problems like this are part of the challenges of running a volunteer program.

“Some students registered and didn’t follow through,” she said. “ I personally feel quite badly about what happened,” she added.

Aside from that mishap, Britton said she had heard a lot of positive feedback about the program from the students. Well, that makes two of us.