Simon Fraser University
EN-13: Community Service

SFU engages its student body in community service through various avenues including postings posted and promoted through SFU's Volunteer Services: http://www.sfu.ca/volunteer/i-want-to-volunteer.html Volunteers of SFU is a social media campaign devoted to providing recognition and appreciation to the fantastic and dedicated volunteers in our community. To date, SFU has featured over 168 student volunteers trough this campaign http://www.sfu.ca/volunteer/volunteersofsfu.html The SFU Surrey – TD Community Engagement Centre (SFU Surrey – TD CEC) is a university – community initiative, funded by the TD Bank Group, that fosters connections between SFU and the ethnically diverse and growing South Fraser community. Our vision is to work collaboratively with community to foster mutually beneficial engagement and partnership between students, faculty and community to improve the educational, social, economic, environmental, cultural and physical health of BC’s South Fraser region. In its fourth year of operation, the SFU Surrey – TD Community Engagement Centre collaborated on over 25 programs and events reaching over 2000 members of the community. Approximately 50 community partnerships were formed or maintained, 290 SFU students engaged contributing over 8500 hours, and we provided 22 employment opportunities for SFU students. In October this year, the local TD Bank branch was a great support to the Bundle Up Campaign for new refugees, in partnership with the SFU Surrey – TD CEC and DIVERSEcity. The branch mobilized several employees to raise funds and collect donations, which helped approximately 100 new families with their settlement journey. The SFU Surrey – TD CEC was also involved in supporting the Immigrant Entrepreneur Fair with DIVERSEcity, where funding for a new Immigrant Entrepreneur Program through TD was announced. In addition, connections were developed this year towards the goal of offering financial literacy workshops through ABC Life Literacy and TD to SFU students. The Friends of Simon (FOS) program recruits, prepares, and assigns university students as literacy tutors in partnering schools, libraries and recreation facilities in the Lower Mainland. FOS works to increase school success through after-school programs in small group and individualized settings and through online tutoring. The program tutors work with students in the public school system up to grade 12 who face learning challenges, particularly newcomer students. The tutoring is provided free of charge to the students, many of whom would not be able to attend if their families had to pay for the after school program. Instruction is based on current trends in pedagogy and tutors receive their training and supervision from members of the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University (SFU) who themselves are involved in education research. SFU students that participate in this program were not included in Number of students engaged in community service (headcount) as they receive an honorarium at the end of their term. This credit was reported based on data from SFU's Volunteer Services and TD Community Engagement Centre where participation numbers are tracked by the subsequent departments. It is safe to assume that there are many SFU students that are engaged in community service that are not captured in the numbers reported above.