Berkeley Project thanks everyone who participated in volunteering for Berkeley Project Month 2013. We also would like to give specific thanks to our sponsors and the City of Berkeley for making this amazing volunteering project possible.
We look forward to Berkeley Project Day 2013, which will be on October 26th, with 2000 volunteers and 80 sites in the fall!
If you have any questions, feel free to email info@berkeleyproject.org for general questions or volunteer@berkeleyproject.org for volunteering related questions.
Read MoreThe Berkeley Project will build a legacy of service and a strong, sustainable partnership between the students of Cal and the city and residents of Berkeley. To this end, the Berkeley Project's foremost endeavor is to host an annual event during which thousands from the Cal campus unite on one day and work to positively impact the community through a network of service projects in and around the City of Berkeley. Fully student operated and supported, the Berkeley Project not only provides powerful assistance to the public, but aims to create a lasting culture of service-learning among its participants.
We're The Berkeley Project, and we aim to permanently change the relationship between the students and residents of Berkeley through hands-on community service.
The Berkeley Project hosts two large scale community service events every year:
1) Each spring semester we will be holding our annual Berkeley Project Month. We will be hosting community service events on the last 3 Saturdays before Spring Break. Each Saturday, we will be sending 100 student volunteers to different community organizations all over the Berkeley area! Mark your calendars!
2) Every fall semester we hold our annual Berkeley Project Day event, where we send over 2,000 volunteers to work on various service projects with our community social organizations throughout Berkeley and Oakland. BP Day begins at 8 am and ends ~3-4 pm with closing festivities on campus.
The Berkeley Project (BP) began in 2006 as a giant, one-day service event held on Saturday, November 11th. Over 1000 students gathered from all over Cal to work together with our community partners at 43 service project sites all over the City of Berkeley. Working with our community organizations, students did everything from building playgrounds and planting trees, to making meals for the homeless and helping out at local senior centers. We are setting out to permanently change the relationship between the students and residents of Berkeley. Our ultimate goal is to create a network of service activities which will
a.) serve the needs of Berkeley and its residents and
b.) forge a positive relationship between the campus and the community.
The Berkeley Project's origins trace back to March 2006 with Andrew Rowland and Peter Do, then third and fourth year undergraduates at the University of California, Berkeley. They set out to put together a group of students who, like themselves, wished to increase the level of social conscience and service within the student body. Such a group would work to develop an effective and convenient venue for student service while also strengthening the relationship between the school and the neighboring community.
Because the campus population is so large, Cal students have a big impact on the city of Berkeley. The Berkeley Project was created with the idea that the dynamic energy in the student body has the power to effect ongoing change in the community. BP is closely modeled after the organization The Detroit Partnership (formerly The Detroit Project) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The Detroit Partnership has successfully been established as a link between students and their community, and the founders envisioned the same for Cal and Berkeley.
The group set out in April of 2006 to organize BP's first large service event, BP Day, in which over 1000 Cal students would join together to participate in a vast number of community service activities throughout Berkeley on that single day. Nearly half a year later, a team of 50 planners had coordinated the largest community service event to ever hit the Cal campus. Now, it was up to the students to come out and demonstrate that the they were able and willing to unite together for purposes of effecting positive change in their very own community. On the morning of November 11th, 2006, despite rumors of T-Shirt shortages and heavy rain, 1000 students awoke, trudged out into the wet and cold, and served their city at 43 worksites throughout Berkeley. The day was a resounding success from the perspectives of students, administration, city staff, and residents alike.