Southeast RCAP's Volunteers for Communities program is a unique project which matches college student volunteers with communities in need of assistance with water and wastewater system improvements or economic development projects. These volunteers assist in a variety of ways such as painting houses and other buildings, digging trenches and laying pipes, and rehabilitating and weatherizing houses. During a program year, hundreds of students representing 15 to 25 colleges and universities as diverse as the University of Notre Dame, Boston College, Loyolla University, University of Massachusetts and Virginia Tech volunteer thousands of hours in over a dozen communities. When considered at the value of $20.53 per volunteer hour* their average yearly contribution of 30,000 volunteer hours equals $615,900 worth of volunteer service to communities needing manpower, but the students frequently comment that they were the real beneficiaries of the experience. They regard their short period of volunteerism as invaluable and life-changing.
*Note: The dollar value of volunteer time is $20.53 per hour for 2008. The value of volunteer time is based on the average hourly earnings of all nonagricultural workers as determined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
For more information on this program, contact Melissa (Kim) Dalton at mdalton@sercap.org.