Every year since 2010, the Student Senators Council (SSC) at NYU New York has hosted the “Violet 100”, New York’s spirit week, with every day of the week featuring new events such as the All-University Games, the Violet Ball, the Ultra Violet Live Talent Show, blood drives, TedxNYU, several concerts, and other events such as fundraisers. This year, in line with the aim of integrating the Global Network, a new project called “The Global Service Initiative” was launched, which entailed a weekend of service for the various NYU portal campuses and sites. Last year’s inaugural Student Government Summit resulted in the creation of the Global Student Council (GSC), “an entity for coordination between the three Portal Campuses and deliberate on and develop its global network”. Each portal campus also now has a Global Affairs Committee (GAC), which collaborate and coordinate on events and news relevant to the Global Network. An annual event during Violet 100 is a Day of Service; this year, the New York campus came up with the idea of making this a Global Network event to show NYU’s student pride in service globally. The GAC’s at the different campuses were then contacted to set up the service opportunities at their respective sites and to promote this event. When asked about the purpose of this project, NYU Shanghai freshman Mufei Murphy Li, who serves as a member of the GAC at Shanghai commented: “It was a project to foster a global community at NYU while working as a unified student body to give back to the cities and people around the world who provide enriching opportunities to our students. The event draws on the global perspective of NYU students to foster an overarching global community through service events that benefit people around the world.” This year, the Global Service Initiative took place from 21st-23rd February, 2015. While the service events at the three portal campuses were different due to the location and resources of the campus, all three campuses were successfully able to host several service opportunities over the weekend. Here at NYU Shanghai, two service opportunities were available: in the morning, a group of students were taken to the Shanghai Healing Home, where they could do some cleaning work and play with kids, and in the afternoon session, another group was taken to the Pudong Social Welfare Elderly Home where they could make Spring Festival couplets for elderly people and play Mahjong, Chinese Chess, or cards with them. Both these events took place on Saturday, February 22nd,with each event lasting for 3-4 hours. Unfortunately, the turn out at the Shanghai opportunities wasn’t that great, with only 4 people showing up for the Shanghai Healing Home program, and only 8 people volunteering at the Pudong Social Welfare Elderly Home. This low attendance was due to the fact that the event took place during NYU Shanghai’s Spring Festival break, during which most students go travelling or go home; moreover, the idea was generated very close to the date of the event, due to which there was limited time for marketing and publicizing. However, having experienced this, next years’ event will take place at a time convenient for all three campuses. As this years’ was the inaugural Global Service Initiative, there is a lot of scope for improvement which is already being brainstormed and implemented. One crucial point of improvement is communication between the three portal campuses to ensure execution; for example, this year there were plans to have similar T-shirts for participants at all three campuses, as well as use identical marketing materials such as flyers, but none of this was executed due to limited time and communication. Improved communication would also result in a program with streamlined details and logistics in all three campuses. There are also plans for possibly collaborating with programs like the Deans’ Service Scholar (DSS) program and the Alternative Breaks (AB) program for fundraising and awareness events next year, as well as a forum to get more student input on possible ideas they have for this program to expand. While there is little prospect of having the exact same service opportunities in all three campuses due to location, it is possible that at NYU Shanghai, next year’s projects will be co-hosted with official NGOs in Shanghai like Stepping Stones and the Chi Heng Foundation. Moreover, it is possible that next years’ opportunities might include international travel. On Century Avenue (OCA) would like to thank NYU Shanghai students Mufei Murphy Li and Anne Li Meisel for providing the information for this article.

This article was written by Lathika Chandra Mouli . Send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: