At Aquinas College, we have had a great deal
of success with our Residential Volunteer Service Program (R.S.V.P.),
which allows students to live together in on-campus homes
or areas of residence halls in order to perform volunteer service
to the campus or nearby communities. Recent succesful groups
have promoted health and wellness activities, Christian fellowship,
or school spirit and attendance at athletic events on campus, tutored
at nearby schools, raised funds for an orphanage in
Peru, and managed the residential recycling program. It is
not a service-learning program in the strictest (Robert Greenleaf 4-part
cyclical model) sense, but it has been a very good tool for creating
and maintaining small communities with intentional common purpose.
