Knights Give Back to Orlando community

On Saturday morning UCF students helped out the Orlando community by donating their time at various locations as part of Knights Give Back.

The volunteer event -- which was put on by the Student Government Association and Volunteer UCF-- had 1,012 participants. Last year about 800 people volunteered, according to event organizers.

Some came to get extra credit for class, some joined with other members of their fraternity or sorority, others came simply to give back to their community.

Volunteers lined up at about 7:30 a.m. outside The Venue on campus where they signed in. After breakfast and some words of encouragement by event organizers and UCF Provost Tony Waldrop, they boarded buses that brought them to the 19 different volunteer sites.

Once at their specified sites, volunteers worked together on projects that involved working with children and the elderly, landscaping and maintaining grounds at nonprofit sites, and helping to restore some of Central Florida's waterways, among other things.

The Wekiva River cleanup was a popular site this year. UCF sent about 100 volunteers to clean garbage from the river on canoes.

On her way to the Wekiva River site, UCF student Shelby LaClare said she chose the site because she likes being outdoors and doing her part to keep natural ecosystems clean.

"With all the pollution, it's nice to clean up our mess," she said.

Jacques Werleigh, a senior and a molecular and microbiology major at UCF, was part of the group of about 50 volunteers working at the arboretum on the UCF campus. Volunteers there were mulching a new walkway through the garden and learning about some of the plant life.

"I'd rather play a productive role [in the environment] than a destructive one," he said. "This is such a great turnout. A lot of hands make for easy work."

Each site held anywhere from around 50 to 200 volunteers. Every site offered was full of registrants, but volunteers even showed up to be put on a wait list to fill in for people who registered to come but didn't show up.

Duncan Ragsdale, a freshman political science major was one of the volunteers waiting to fill in at a site. He eventually got the chance to participate at Boys Town, a nonprofit organization that works with at-risk youth and families, where he helped make Halloween decorations with the kids there.

"I still wanted to be able to help, I just really wanted to be here," he said.

Earlier in the morning, Ragsdale told fellow volunteers to remember to have fun and to do their best to help other people.

"We go out in the community to do these changes in order for people to enjoy a better, more satisfying life," he said. "It's all for the greater good of society."

Volunteers began returning to campus after their day's work at about 1 p.m. Once there they were greeted and thanked by event organizers and members of the Office of Student Involvement at UCF.

"We are very happy with the impact that UCF and Knights Give Back had on our local community and we look forward to doing more events like this in the future," Haley Groves, coordinator of OSI said.