Once Just a Chicago Event, Vincentian Service Day Now Stretches from Coast to Coast

The day’s T-shirts are as bright and colorful as the city itself, depicting Andy Warhol-like visions of the university’s patron, St. Vincent de Paul. The 2008 theme, “Modern Service, Pop Art,” reflects the exuberance and joy that participants feel toward one of the institution’s signature events, so much so that the many of the university’s alumni will be participating in their own communities from coast to coast.

DePaul University’s 11th annual Vincentian Service Day will take place May 3, sending approximately 900 volunteers to 32 sites across Chicago to perform community service tasks, providing more than 3,500 hours of labor to Chicago in one afternoon. DePaul groups will partner with some of the city’s top social service organizations with a special emphasis on “greening” the city.

The day will begin with a welcome ceremony and invocation by the Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, C.M., DePaul president, at 9:30 a.m. at St. Vincent de Paul Church, 1010 W. Webster Ave. in Lincoln Park. Then the teams of volunteers – DePaul students, faculty, staff, alumni and neighbors – will depart for their respective sites to feed, care, clean, paint, weed, plant, organize and renovate, including the following:

• Ebenezer Church, 4501 S. Vincennes Ave.: Volunteers will be cleaning and gardening on the church grounds.

In addition, eight DePaul alumni chapters around the nation are planning their own local service outings to coincide with the event: New York City, Washington, D.C., Detroit, Denver, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Fort Worth, Texas. Alumni at these sites will volunteer at local food banks and soup kitchens, gardening, cleaning area schools and organizing a charity thrift store. All volunteer teams in the Chicago area will return shortly after 3 p.m. for a picnic gathering on the campus quad (along the 1100 block of W. Fullerton).

“The way this event builds the DePaul community always makes me proud,” said Greg Stolhand, coordinator of Vincentian Service Day for University Ministry. “This is even more evident this year, seeing how alumni across the country stay connected to DePaul by volunteering in the same ways as students, faculty and staff on campus.”

The event takes place each spring in honor of 17th century French priest St. Vincent de Paul, 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 connections to the cities they call home.

Additionally, DePaul will have two suburban volunteer groups working on May 17 with the Self Help Closet and Pantry of Des Plaines and Sharing Connections, a Downers Grove-based social service agency that distributes gently used household items and furniture to families in need.

DePaul is the largest Catholic university in the United States, and the largest private, not-for-profit university in the Midwest. An innovative and diverse university offering pragmatic educational programs that instill values, including a commitment to community service, DePaul has been named as one of the nation’s top “Colleges with a Conscience” by the Princeton Review. Also, DePaul’s service-learning program has been named one of the country’s top programs of its kind for the past five years running by U.S. News & World Report.