RUPA holds Scarlet Day of Service event for New Brunswick community

On Saturday, the Rutgers University Planning Association (RUPA) held its semiannual Scarlet Day of Service, a local community service event led by Rutgers students. 

During the event, students and alumni volunteered to clean neighborhoods, renew outdoor areas or help residents in New Brunswick, according to RUPA's website.

Elyse Quiñones, a School of Environmental and Biological Sciences junior and the director of community service for RUPA, said it was her first time participating in the event since transferring to Rutgers last semester. 

Quiñones said that by the time she joined RUPA in January, the organization had already begun planning this spring's Scarlet Day of Service.

"It's definitely a couple of months of planning and really diligent execution of … a lot of different tasks," she said. 

Volunteers registered for the Scarlet Day of Service online and had the opportunity to participate individually, on behalf of a larger organization or as a site leader, Quiñones said.  Approximately 500 volunteers and 20 organizations registered for this year's event. 

"As many people register, we let them volunteer. And as long as they fill out the registration forms and get their information in, they're able to volunteer with us," she said. 

On the morning of the event, volunteers met on Morrell Street near the College Avenue campus to receive a Scarlet Day of Service T-shirt, complete waiver forms, eat breakfast and meet other participants.

Quiñones said volunteers were placed in groups based on how many people the project sites could accommodate. Buses then transported volunteers to their respective locations, all of which were within an approximately 1-hour radius of the University. Participants worked at their project site until the event ended at 5 p.m., she said.

Though RUPA typically plans for volunteers to work at the same locations every year, the projects vary at the request of the local community, Quiñones said.

Previously, Scarlet Day of Service projects included picking up litter in New Brunswick and completing interactive activities with the youth and elderly individuals.

This year, projects consisted of arts and crafts at the Roosevelt Care Center and Whitesbog Preservation Trust, arranging food packages at nearby churches and food pantries and tidying local libraries.

"It's a wide variety of different sites that we're working with and a wide variety of service projects that we're doing just to make sure that we are serving the New Jersey community at large," Quiñones said.

She said that even though she took pleasure in coordinating the event, she also enjoyed connecting with other volunteers in their shared goal of service and knowing that they contributed to helping the community.

"I think it's really important to go out into the real world, outside of this college bubble, and just making sure that you're always trying to do good for those around you," she said.