The holidays remind us this is the season of giving. All members of SUNY make a concerted effort to volunteer and contribute to their respective campuses and local communities. The 30 Days of Giving campaign highlights students and faculty across all of our 64 campuses who participate in volunteerism and give back to those in need. With over 467,000 students and three million alumni, we want to celebrate the impact the SUNY community has made in all of their unique community service projects. As we learned last year, the byproduct of taking volunteerism to scale is not only building character in our students themselves as they join our over three million alumni, but also to set an example of impact as the nation’s largest university system.
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Day 24
Binghamton University
The Binghamton University basketball programs took part in the United Way ‘Day of Caring’ in September. Members of the men’s and women’s basketball teams joined nearly a thousand volunteers from the Southern Tier for a county-wide day of service. The day was organized by the United Way of Broome County.
Players and coaches from the men’s basketball team spent their day of service powerwashing the Binghamton Salvation Army on Washington Street in the heart of downtown Binghamton. During a rain-soaked day the players spent a few hours scrubbing walls and washing windows to help beautify a prominent pillar in the community.
“We always seize the opportunity to help out a community that is so good to us,” men’s head basketball coach Tommy Dempsey said. “Getting out into the community and giving back is something we try to instill in our players.”
Women’s basketball players and coaches collaborated to help clean up Cheri A. Lindsey Memorial Park on Binghamton’s north side and paint the weight room at the YMCA in downtown Binghamton. The group weathered the rain for a day of gardening and landscaping. Other members of the team were more fortunate to be inside giving the YMCA weight room an updated look.
“The United Way’s Day of Caring was a fantastic event,” women’s head basketball coach Nicole Scholl said. “Our players and coaches love giving back to a community that gives so much support to our programs here at Binghamton.”
The ‘Day of Caring’ was established 12 years ago following the Sept. 11 tragedy and is a way for businesses and citizens to pay homage to the local community. The United Way’s ‘Day of Caring’ has expanded since its first outing in 2001 to more than 60 local companies, who dispatched employees to do volunteer work at local non-profits and government agencies.
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