More than 2,100 students, faculty and staff members from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette will spend a day sprucing up the community as part of the Big Event.
The daylong community service project will be held Saturday, Oct. 22. Volunteers will pick up litter, plant trees, paint schools and public parks, and remove illegal signs from roadways and medians.
University volunteers will check in at the front of Martin Hall at 7:30 a.m. on the day of the event. An opening ceremony will be held at 8 a.m. Participants will head to their project sites at 8:30 a.m.
Volunteers will fan out to more than 30 sites across several parishes, including Lafayette, St. Landry, St. Martin, and Vermilion, said Dr. David Yarbrough, UL Lafayette dean of Community Service.
“Dozens of students, faculty, and staff work together to make the Big Event a success, but the students really deserve the credit for pulling it off,” he said.
Kyle Sarver, UL Lafayette’s logistics advisor for the Big Event, said about half of the University volunteers will assist with Project Front Yard.
As part of that Lafayette Consolidated Government program, schools, businesses, nonprofit organizations and civic leaders collaborate to keep yards, homes and public spaces neat and attractive.
UL Lafayette is teaming up with LCG to clean up a stretch of University Avenue that extends from near Lafayette Regional Airport to Interstate 10, according to Sarver. “Volunteers will be assigned to groups responsible for cleaning designated stretches of University Avenue. Students will also walk into adjacent neighborhoods a short distance to clean side streets,” he said.
Some of the litter gathered will be placed inside 8-foot-tall letters that spell out #YARDWORK. The letters consist of a framework of steel rebar covered in chicken wire, and are open at the top so that litter can be placed inside.
The debris-filled letters will be placed at Lafayette Middle School on University Avenue, as a visual reminder of the impact of litter on the community.
Also on tap for the Big Event is a Better Block event. Students will clean up and plant trees on McKinley Street near campus. Afterward, all students who participated in the Big Event will be able to attend a block party on McKinley Street.
“The party will be a pat on the back for the students to celebrate a job well done, with food trucks and a band,” said Dana Bekurs, associate director of UL Lafayette’s Office of First-Year Experience and the Big Event’s student adviser.
The Big Event began in 1982 at Texas A&M and grew to more than 72 universities across the nation.
At UL Lafayette, several campus departments and organizations help coordinate the Big Event, including the Office of First-Year Experience, the Office of Sustainability, the Office of Community Service, and the Office of Orientation.