Giving Back and Sticking Around?

Students looking to volunteer and community organizations gathered in the Mandela Room at BU Thursday in hopes of helping each other. Students are given the chance to possibly earn credit for internships, form long lasting partnerships or just help out where ever they're needed.

"This is a great opportunity. We've had hundreds of students come by already, we're very excited about talking to them about how they could be of help to us and how we might be able to help them," said Larry Denniston of the Broome County Council of Churches.

Larry Denniston from the Broome County Council of Churches has been working very closely with one student run volunteer group to prepare for a hunger walk.

"We help out the community by just putting on events for people. If an organization comes to us and they say they need this amount of volunteers to run a 5K we will provide those volunteers for them and help them out in any way we can," said Erin Small of the Student Volunteer Center.

And helping the community may help keep these students in the community after graduation.

"And often this turns into something more than just volunteering sometimes they'll do an internship for credit. Sometimes they graduate and they're even hired locally which is something we're always striving for," said Allison Alden the Director of the Center of Civic Engagement at BU.

"Going on out of college I know a lot of different people from the community that I never would have met if I had just sat in my dorm so it was really rewarding that way," said Erin Small.