Students encouraged to register to be Badger Volunteers

The semester-long Badger Volunteers program offers UW–Madison students the training and support they need in order to provide meaningful public service to the Madison community.

Teams of students, organized by a student leader, serve community partners on a weekly basis for an entire semester. The program gives students the opportunity to work with a population they would not otherwise have the chance to connect with, while providing over 50 local nonprofit organizations with dedicated students as volunteers.

“Badger Volunteers has allowed me to go out into the community and experience a different side of Madison,” said one of the volunteers.

“Coming from a smaller town in the suburbs, I wasn’t used to being surrounded by diverse groups. I loved being able to enter a classroom at a school here in Madison and work with students from different backgrounds and to appreciate not only their culture, but also the privileges that I grew up with. New experiences and people helped me grow as a person, and I was able to learn a lot from people half my age.”

The program addresses poverty directly and indirectly, changing volunteers’ perspectives and acting as a catalyst for future involvement and service.

Last fall, 400 student volunteers provided more than 6,000 hours of service in the Madison community.

“We recently implemented specialized teams,” says Badger Volunteer Tayler O’Donnell, who serves on the program’s Senior Leader Committee.

“They include Interfaith Teams in which students of various religious backgrounds work in service together, and Green Teams in which members walk or ride bikes to their weekly volunteer sites,” O’Donnell says.

The program is housed in the Morgridge Center for Public Service, and is fortunate to have use of the Volunteer Transportation Program, a taxi-service for student volunteers. This service allows students transportation to nonprofits that are not on the bus line and otherwise difficult to reach.

The Badger Volunteers program is a great way to meet other students, while volunteering weekly at a time that works for the students’ schedules. Service areas range from tutoring in the Madison schools, working in a community garden, or repairing bikes for kids in the Madison area.

Registration for the Badger Volunteers program takes place online from Monday, Jan. 23, to Friday, Feb. 3. Students can register online here.

For more information, contact badgervol@morgridge.wisc.edu.