With more than 60 service groups already registered to participate in the VT Engage Kickoff on Oct. 16, the United Way of Montgomery, Radford, and Floyd counties is providing recruitment assistance for the event.
The United Way is providing the use of an online service called Volunteer Solutions, which matches students to organizations involved in the event.
"United Way is a resource provider for human services and a community builder for the area," said Kim Davidson-Hamley, the executive director of United Way. "We are essentially a volunteer center for the community."
VT Engage is an organization that will strive to reach 600,000 hours of community service by April 16, 2008. Tech students, faculty and staff will contribute 300,000 hours, and Tech alumni have agreed to match that number.
"VT Engage has been in the works since January. It's related to the VT Service Learning program," said Karen Gilbert, the coordinator of VT Engage. "Ever since ... April 16, VT Engage has been more fully developed as a way to help people heal."
VT Engage is designed to connect Tech to the local community. It also encourages community service, helps demonstrate the importance of volunteering, and can help people heal.
United Way's Volunteer Solutions allows organizations to find the volunteers they need while also assisting volunteers to find the organizations they want to volunteer for. The United Way wanted to help VT Engage in some way, so they decided to contribute by lending Volunteer Solutions to them, Davidson-Hamley said.
"Volunteer Solutions is a very easy tool for both the organizations and volunteers to use," Gilbert said.
The local United Way also helps the service group complete the registration online and gives each organization advice on how to structure its volunteer needs. It also offer one-on-one help to other service groups involved and do a quick screen of each organization that applies to make sure everything is completed as needed.
Davidson-Hamley is also on the service venue committee for United Way, which lends its knowledge of different community non-profit organizations to VT Engage.
The United Way will also have a booth at the Oct. 16 kickoff event that will have information about Volunteer Solutions, an area for organizations with volunteer opportunities to register, and service to other vendors.
"Our goal is to be the best partner (with VT-Engage) that we can be with Volunteer Solutions," said Davidson-Hamley. "We want to be very successful with that initiative."
The VT Engage Web site, www.engage.vt.edu, provides information for organizations that want to participate and for volunteers that would like to pledge a minimum of 10 hours.