NAIT’s new Campus Activities Board (CAB) has been busy planning events that will make your time at NAIT the best it can be. Board members were hired in the spring to work with NAITSA’s executives and full-time staff to help develop and promote campus programing. CAB’s current board members are divided into three subcommittees, working with full-time staff members in events, marketing and communications, and volunteering. Each subcommittee works closely with appropriate NAITSA staff members; the Campus Activity Board acts as the bridge to the student body, finding fun and novel ways to share information with students and make NAITSA events bigger and more memorable.
Virtual volunteer centre
One of the projects CAB has been passionately working to build this year is the new Volunteer Initiatives Program. The program will act as a virtual volunteer centre for the campus, allowing NAITSA to provide more opportunities for students that are looking for volunteer opportunities both on and off campus. The Volunteer Initiatives Program takes advantage of OrgSync’s capabilities to post volunteer opportunities offered by community not-for-profits and charity organizations who can then manage their own postings. Added benefits of OrgSync is the value it can add to students who participate – in addition to making the opportunities easy to access, it provides an easy way for the Volunteer Initiatives Program and NAITSA to follow up with students and make sure that their experience was valuable.
OrgSync allows volunteer hours and campus participation to be tracked so students can log in and print a co-curricular record that has all of their involvement over the year, including who they volunteered with as well as the events they attended. Reflecting on the year and brushing up on a resume is a breeze! Jennifer Grundke, NAITSA’s Campus Culture Director, explained that providing this service and making meaningful volunteer opportunities easy to access was something that NAITSA and the Campus Activity Board was eager to achieve.
Volunteering and networking in the greater community offers students a chance to “[gain] skills that they need in the workplace and these might be skills that are hard to get in the classroom, so getting out there and applying what you learn here at NAIT and receiving feedback … provides life skills, [you’ll] build your resume, and you’ll stand out from some of the other students in your program.” Often, volunteering can even provide a chance to combine your studies with your personal interests. The Volunteer Initiative Program is currently still in the process of being populated while CAB is reaching out to organizations in the community in order to provide a diverse range of opportunities to NAIT students.
January launch
They’re allowing the program to grow organically during the fall semester but they have an official launch planned for January. Board member Joel Benitez says that “[they’ve] started adding organizations and different positions” and “it’s pretty neat, connecting the students with organizations in the community.” He also mentioned that in addition to the hard launch in January, students will have the opportunity to meet representatives from a variety of local not-for-profits and charities on Nov. 3 in the South Lobby. You can view opportunities already posted from the Volunteer Initiatives Program by logging into your OrgSync account; there’s a convenient link under the “Featured” list on the left column of the page.
Danielle Fuechtmann
