Annual Vincentian Service Day to Offer 4,000 Hours of Community Help This Saturday

"We’re the help."

That’s been the motto – emblazoned on t-shirts – for thousands of DePaul University volunteers every May since 1998, as teams fan out across the city to spend a weekend day performing community service tasks. That tradition will continue this Saturday, May 7, as DePaul will celebrate its eighth annual Vincentian Service Day. Approximately 1,000 volunteers are expected to take part, performing more than 4,000 hours of community service in one afternoon.

The event takes place each spring in honor of St. Vincent de Paul, the university’s namesake patron who was known as the "Apostle of Charity." The day is an opportunity for DePaul students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends to build relationships with the community and remain connected to the city.

The day will begin with a welcome ceremony and invocation at 9:30 a.m. at St. Vincent de Paul Church, 1010 W. Webster St. in Lincoln Park. Then, the teams of volunteers will depart for their respective sites to clean, paint, weed, organize and refurbish, including the following:

• Erie Neighborhood House, 1701 W. Superior Ave.

In addition, a team of approximately 40 volunteers will be taking part in community clean-up in the neighborhood surrounding DePaul’s Lincoln Park Campus. The teams will return at 3 p.m. for a picnic gathering on the campus quad (along Fullerton Parkway, just west of Kenmore Avenue).

Also, DePaul has expanded its reach this weekend to send a team of volunteers to the Pink Ribbon Ball on May 6 and the registration area for the Y-Me Race on May 8, both to benefit breast cancer research. Additionally, two of DePaul’s suburban campuses will host volunteer projects on May 21 in Des Plaines and Naperville.

With a total enrollment of 23,570 students on two city and five suburban campuses, DePaul is the eighth-largest private university in the United States and the largest Catholic university in the nation. DePaul is an innovative and diverse university offering pragmatic educational programs that instill values, including a commitment to community service.

DePaul recently was named by the Princeton Review as one of the nation’s top "Colleges with a Conscience" in an upcoming book, and DePaul’s service learning program also was named one of the country’s top programs of its kind by U.S. News & World Report in its annual college rankings issue, "America's Best Colleges," in 2004 and 2005.

(NOTE TO ASSIGNMENT EDITORS AND PHOTO DESKS: For additional information or to reach volunteers or Service Day leaders on the event date, please contact Shawn Malayter at 312/420-9648).