7 Days of Service UNO, 201

THANKS UNO! The University of Nebraska's Service Learning Academy hosted a week-long event during spring break for students to volunteer. The Seven Days of Service was amazing! Thanks for inviting us to participate. The group of students and mentors helping was above and beyond.

With their help, we:

• Created over 750 bracelets for Malagasy children participating in the reforestation efforts. Each was assembled with a tag that reads "One for you. One for me. Let's work together to plant a tree!" and was printed one side English and the other Malagasy.

• Painted 130 paper plate "tortoise shells" and cut 400 tortoise body parts to be made into tambourines by Malagasy children to celebrate their biodiversity.

• Colored and assembled 84 buttons with conservation messages for youth in Madagascar.

• Cut out 1,000 lemur faces to make paper sack puppets, along with 1,080 lemur ears for the art project.

• Traced over 300 hands, cut and glued them to tongue depressors with their names on them. Primary school children in Madagascar will write 5 things the forest gives them in the fingers of their new friends from the US as we learn about the importance of the forest and ways we are all connected.

I would like to mention, this was a great experience. Most of the students helping were refugees from Korea. They worked so hard to accomplish as much as they could to give something to someone who does not have everything. They understood that and mentioned several times how excited the Malagasy children would be to receive a bracelet or participate in the art projects because they would have loved it in the refugee camp.

On the last day as we were working hard . . . cutting, glueing, counting . . . the students were all syncronizing their i-pods and listening/singing "We are the World" !!! Over and over!!! I just don't think a day of service gets better than that.