Since 2009, the UCLA Volunteer Center has expanded to organize and provide community service opportunities for Bruins, bringing the UCLA community together in Los Angeles and around the world. Not only does the Center serve as a central hub for community planning and civic engagement, but strives to make a positive impact by demonstrating the True Bruin value of service. This year, the Volunteer Center will celebrate its 10th annual anniversary of Volunteer Day on Saturday, Sept. 29. A project that began with 4,000 participants and eight service projects has vastly expanded into more than 8,000 UCLA community members at sites that reach nearly every major city in the nation. Get inspired and read about how volunteers, community leaders and campus collaborators continue to make a difference in the world.

Naomi McSwain

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AT AL WOOTEN JR. HERITAGE CENTER

“We were very happy and thankful to host students and faculty from UCLA at the center today making a positive impact for children on our nation's King Day of Service.”

As Wooten student Trayvion said it makes him feel good having a nice place to go after school. The better our kids feel about their surroundings the more apt they are to keep coming and to benefit from an array of education and recreation. Thank you UCLA students and staff and Chancellor Gene Block. Thanks for the volunteers, materials and expertise and a very fun day showing our students how to build, plant, paint and beautify their surroundings. Thanks for the discussion group on going to college! Thank you for the investment in our youth (over $8,000 in labor and materials!) and some homegrown snacks via our new and improved garden...oranges, lemons, strawberries, lettuce, tomatoes, broccoli and kale. Thank you Wooten parents, youth, staff and volunteers for always coming together in love and family.

Principal Munoz

SECOND STREET ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

“I didn’t realize the impact that this would have on my community and my kids,”

Dozens of UCLA students got to work painting hallways, planting a garden, creating full-scale murals on school walls and building makeshift rockets with students in classrooms. “I didn’t realize the impact that this would have on my community and my kids,” Munoz said of last year’s event. “It gave my students a sense that, ‘One day, I’m going to UCLA, and I’m going to be a Bruin.’ Our conversations are now greater and larger in scope. Parents are asking more questions. It’s changed the culture and the whole dynamic of the school.

Monica Martinez

VOLUNTEER DAY PROJECT LEADER

“Within the few hours you are here, you can make such a difference in these people’s lives.”

In 2015 Monica Martinez, a UCLA freshman from South Los Angeles, watched organized chaos unfold around her at Drake Stadium as she lined up with thousands of other new students and shuffled toward dozens of buses destined for Volunteer Day sites across the greater Los Angeles region. Martinez felt the anticipation build as she started on this new adventure, moving as one body toward a single mission: to help others. “You feel like you are a part of this bigger community,” she reminisced. That was the first time she really felt like a Bruin, she recalled with a big smile. Her destination back then was the Veterans Home of California — West Los Angeles, where she worked in the garden and played Bingo with a group of veterans. “Even though it wasn’t the most glamorous thing we could be doing, I knew that it would be something that would be lasting for them,” she said. The following year she returned as a project leader to guide first-year and transfer students to the Watts Senior Center, one of 50 community partner locations where UCLA students painted, cleaned up, restored, planted, and lead activities with children and dance with seniors. “Just at that moment, it really clicked in me, and I knew that even the small amount of time I spent with them meant so much. It just makes everything so much more rewarding in the end,” Martinez said.