Community Service

You can find honors students all over the UIW campus participating in the many service activities offered through the university. Here's one example:

In October, the Honors Program joined many other student organizations collecting cans of food as part of the Student Government Association's annual Golden Harvest. It was a fun and meaningful event.

All proceeds collected went to the San Antonio Food Bank, which services the San Antonio metropolitan area. It's great to know that the hundreds of pounds of food collected are headed for people in need. 

Faculty-sponsored Meet the Mission is another fall event that gets students into the community to help nonprofit organizaitons over several hours. seeing how others. Honors was at Inner City Development cleaning out a shed and organizing various areas of the offices; they organized files at a retirement center, and performed a variety of tasks at several children's agencies.

Perhaps the most eye-opening experience for some was riding on the city's bus system for the first time...in the rain! The realization that this is how hundreds of people get to and from work and school each day made access to a car so much more appreciated.

Our Community Service Partner!

In the spring of 2009, the students prepared their recommendations for who we would partner with in community service. The resounding winner, among five worthy causes, was Haven for Hope. Haven for Hope is an umbrella organization with a 37-acre campus in downtown San Antonio providing essential social services to the city's homeless population.

We are working on two programs, both beginning in 2010. The first is an educational program and tour of Haven for Hope we customized for eighth-graders in metropolitan San Antonio. We gave our first tour in April and will continue in the fall. The second is a sports program for the youth living on the Haven campus; we are coaching during the week and refereeing games on Saturdays. We're starting with soccer and plan to move into other sports as time goes on.