The program��is a partnership between �þ��� and several organizations in Alamance County and offers Elon graduates the opportunity to engage in one year of service work with the goal of improving the health, education and economic well-being of Alamance County residents. As a fellow, Deutsch is working with the ��and is focused on how public health impacts the lives of those in the local community.

During a “typical year,” the fellow working with the health department would be involved in a range of public health initiatives including STD clinics and aiding in the county’s opioid response through the setting up of needle syringe exchanges. While Deutsch has been involved with a few of these projects during his year of service, his main duties have been driven by the county’s response to the pandemic.

Deutsch is combatting the local impacts of the pandemic in a variety of ways. He has helped get groceries and hot meals for those who have tested positive for COVID-19. Additionally, he had gathered supplies such as masks, thermometers and hand sanitizer for residents who need them.

“It’s just been very impactful for me just to kind of see how people on a day-to-day or even in this kind of weird circumstance connect with our healthcare system,” Deutsch said.

A large part of Deutsch’s role includes contact tracing where he manages local COVID-19 data and provides support for those who have tested positive for the virus or have been identified as close contacts.

As vaccination efforts have ramped up across the state, Deutsch has assisted with vaccine distribution in Alamance County. Not only does he physically work at the local vaccine clinics to support getting needles in arms, but he also creates literature to help explain what the vaccine registration process is in a way that’s digestible for residents to understand and feel comfortable as they opt to get the vaccine.

“There have been times that I’ve been very distraught in seeing how some people are putting in these very difficult situations without access to great health care, both in our community and of course you can really expand that to our greater kind of landscape in the nation of how people interact with health care,” Deutsch said. “So it just has been very meaningful to have very personal connections with everybody and kind of see how the pandemic and how other public health issues kind of really impact their day-to-day life.”

Deutsch initially applied to this service program with the hope of continuing to grow the connections he made during his time at Elon, particularly those built through his work with the Kernodle Center for Civic Life. His work as a fellow has provided him the opportunity to engage with his passion for service with the local community for an additional fifth year.

While at Elon, Deutsch was an office manager at the Kernodle Center and held various leadership positions including Director of Service Learning Community, Director of Youth Development and Executive Director for Leadership and Development.

“I was always interested in not just being on campus but also really connecting with the community,” he said. “That naturally fed into the Kernodle clinic and really just helped me to find ways to continue to serve and to continue to be involved and kind of propelled me where I am now.”

And now he’s doing exactly that: fostering those Elon connections in meaningful ways that expand beyond the “Elon bubble.”

“It’s great to kind of know a lot of people and not feel like I’m jumping into such a big, large issue kind of by myself or without having different layers of support,” Deutsch said.

Deutsch hopes to continue on to med school and engage in community health to bridge the gap between healthcare and public health.

Through its after-school program, The Salvation Army Boys & Girls Club of Alamance County works to “inspire and enable all young people to realize their full potential.” The organization works with the university to staff the program with student volunteers. These volunteers tutor Alamance County students to meet their academic goals, an experience that continues to foster meaningful relationships as students have the opportunity to serve as mentors.

LINCS volunteer coordinator Abigail Fisher ’23 says Elon student volunteers have become role models especially as the students they are mentoring try to continue their learning and make sense of the world during this abnormal school year.

“I would say this program is needed now more than ever,” she said. “But also I would say that this program is a place where you can really see how as a person you’re like singularly making an impact on other people and other kids’ lives.”

Since the fall, The Boys & Girls Club has been operating with extended hours in response to the Alamance County school district operating on a remote schedule. Instead of only opening for their after school program, The Boys and Girls Club has been open from 6:45 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. each school day Throughout the day, Elon volunteers and student workers facilitate learning and assist students in completing their coursework.

The after-school program is still offered from 3 to 5:30 p.m. during the week. This afternoon session engages the students in various activities to take a break from learning through their screens.

Other changes this year include a reduced program capacity. There are roughly 35 students currently enrolled in the program, which is about half as many as usual due to COVID-19 safety guidelines. The majority of the students are in second to fifth grade, however, the program includes everyone from kindergarteners to high schoolers.

Aside from the extended hours and reduced capacity, Fisher says the communal energy of the Boys and Girls club remains the same.

“My favorite part of this program is just really watching how the kids are growing. I really love the relationships that I’ve made with them,” she said. “It’s like a big family here.”

A summer program will run the week after the district’s school year ends. The Boys & Girls Club is currently hiring Elon students who are interested in working at the organization as a camp counselor this summer. For more information on how to volunteer and/or summer program applications, contact��bgc@elon.edu.

“Elon Votes! will never have an opinion on where you vote, we only care that you do it,” said Cate Podell, director of civic engagement for Elon Volunteers.

Elon Votes! was created six years ago in response to outside partisan groups coming to campus and distributing voter registration forms, but not making students fully aware of the options available to them to register to vote in North Carolina or in their home state, if they were originally from somewhere else. Some students also found little support in the voter registration process and making sure their voter registration was successfully completed.

Those challenges promoted Elon to create an on-campus, university-affiliated voter registration organization that was nonpartisan and would accurately provide students from all 50 states with the voting information they needed to make their voice heard during election seasons. This continues to be the mission of Elon Votes!

This election season, Elon Votes! has assisted students with voter registration, requesting absentee ballots, changing their voting registration to North Carolina and other election-related tasks. Elon Votes! has a new office at Moseley 105F that is dedicated to the organization and is staffed from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays to provide students with any voting resources they might need. Elon Votes also has space in the Kernodle Center for Civic Life in Moseley 230. This Elon Votes location is staffed from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each weekday.

On Tuesday mornings during College Coffee from 9:40 to 10:20 a.m., Elon Votes! can be found with a table at Speaker’s Corner outside Moseley Center. �þ��� can stop by during this time to ask questions and bring any of their voting concerns to the staff there.

To provide the Elon community with as many voting resources as possible, Elon Votes! has launched a Voting Ambassadors program. The program is new this year and consists of trained students who represent the organization at different on-campus events, engage in presentations for different student organizations and act as another point of contact for students with any voting-related questions.

Elon Votes! is hoping to increase student voter turnout from 44 percent in 2016 to 50 percent this year. This year, Elon has been a national leader in voter registration. TurboVote, the program Elon Votes! uses to register and help Elon students to vote, has a leaderboard each month of the top 10 universities in the country for voter registration. According to the most recent numbers, Elon ranked fourth in the country in the percentage of �þ���s who have registered to vote (32 percent) and was No. 8 in total voter registrations through TurboVote

“We’re up there with like Princeton, Harvard and Stanford and those numbers are really really amazing. So our goal is to keep that moving, keep those number high and just register as many students as we possibly can,” Podell said.

Elon Votes! hopes to establish a relationship of trust with students on campus and make them feel very at ease and comfortable to ask the organization questions about voting. The organization has been increasing its presence this year, even as the university has seen fewer in-person events on campus this fall.

Andrea Sheetz, co-coordinator of Elon Votes! and an ambassador for The Andrew Goodman Foundation, says that colleges can be divisive places, with many students still discovering what they believe and where they fit in on the political spectrum.

“Right now we’re seeing and we understand that a lot of students may not exactly know where they fall,” Sheetz said. “And so we really want our events and our ambassadors and our leadership to really be that like, ‘it’s okay, like, we’re all here to learn.'”

Elon Votes! has delivered some of its election season programming virtually to ensure that Elon students can be civically engaged on campus amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. A number of debate watch events the organization had hoped to hold in Moseley Center for a limited number of attendees have had to be canceled due to the pandemic.

In the meantime, Elon Votes! has encouraged students to watch the debates on their own with their roommates. �þ��� could “register” their watch party and pick up a little gift bag of snacks from the Elon Votes! Office. During the debates, Elon students also have had the opportunity to interact with Elon Votes! coordinators via their social media to answer discussion questions and be entered to win an Oak House gift card.

Election day programming is still in the works, but students should be on the lookout for more information soon.

The energy around the election season is something that the organization has noticed and is grateful for.

“I think like people are reaching out to us from like departments all across campus,” Sheetz said. �þ��� who none of us have ever met have said, ‘Oh, yeah, I know who you are.’ Civic engagement in the last few years has kind of been like this little circle, but it’s really getting out there and more people are getting involved and integrating it into the work that their departments are doing and the conversations they’re having. This issue is so much bigger than three of us, it’s so much bigger than this campus, so that has been one of the best parts for us,” Sheetz said.

During non-election years, Elon Votes! focuses on the education aspect of civic engagement. They typically host speakers throughout the academic year and partner with departments on campus engagement to facilitate conversations about how campus engagement works within the department’s area of expertise.

Elon students can register to vote by going to and using Turbo Vote. This computer program has state-specific information and will send users text notifications about important voting deadlines. Another resource available to students on the Elon Votes! website is called �þ��� Votes project, which shows a map of state-specific voting guidelines that students need to know before casting their ballots.

Any students with voting questions should visit the Elon Votes! website or stop by one of the Elon Votes! office locations during the hours mentioned above. Those who are interested in getting more involved with Elon Votes! should email

“Right now, we’re in crisis,” said Vanhook,��an associate pastor at the��and a community organizer for the��. “I knew I had to pull a plan together using the resources we have here, which are many in the county. I needed to put a plan in place that would be to address some type of inequity. We’ve been working with two issues: the digital inequities and various types of inequities for older populations.”

Vanhook teamed up with Elon’s Assistant Professor of Philosophy Lauren Guilmette in the beginning of the spring semester. Guilmette was looking for local activists to present lectures to her Health and Social Justice academic service-learning class. The course was cross listed with public health, poverty and social justice, peace and conflict studies and women’s gender and sexuality studies. Guilmette was looking to form a partnership with an organization that focused on inequities in older populations in Alamance County as she wanted her students to develop a sense of place and connectedness to the world outside Elon’s campus.

When Elon moved to remote learning in March, Vanhook and Guilmette decided to continue their original plan and further develop their partnership to include the ARC. Their plan had always been to reach out to persons 50 and above at North Park in East Burlington and to host an in person resource fair for those residents. They decided to move forward with that plan. The only difference now was that it would be entirely virtual.

“Now that we’re remote and also living in a pandemic we could not have imagined in February or even in early March, the issues of the class are all the more vital and our concern for the local community is all the more acute,” Guilmette said during the virtual resource fair.

The partnership between the ARC, the Union Chapel UCC and Guilmette’s Health and Social Justice class, began to bring local Alamance County residents’ virtual resources and assistance during the COVID-19 outbreak. Together, the team reached out to local community members who were age 50 and above through online platforms and conference calls. When reaching out, they were making sure that local residents knew what resources were available to them and knew the most up to date coronavirus related information. If there were resident needs that were not being met, Vanhook and her team wanted to be able to provide the residents with a way of communicating that information, so that necessary help could be provided.

“It’s a big community coming together for this one issue and modeling what can be done in other communities. This will show how people can affect change in their own neighborhoods just by sharing the information and checking in on one another, so we want to model that,” Vanhook said.

As information began to circulate, Guilmette’s students began planning the virtual resource fair event. For this, the students conducted research on various local agencies and organizations that are locally available to East Burlington residents. The mission was to provide local residents with the best assistance possible during these rather difficult times.

“For our purposes during this pandemic we hope to circulate resources, facts/myths and tips geared towards the local community especially to those 50 and above,” Guilmette said during the virtual resource fair.

Guilmette’s students found information on resources to manage through stressors, COVID-19 hotlines, local food pantries, mental health resources, shelter and housing assistance, child care resources for essential workers, domestic violence services, general COVID-19 information/guidelines, etc. Most of this information was included in the virtual resource fair Facebook Live event that took place on April 24 on the ARC Facebook page.

“Donna has been an amazing community partner for our students,” Guilmette said during the virtual resource fair.

Guilmette’s class also produced their own “zines,” short for magazine or fanzine that related to various coronavirus topics. “Zines” are small handmade publications that are utilized by marginalized communities to circulate necessary information. This was another way for the partnership to continue their mission of reaching out and providing information/resources to older populations in East Burlington. More on these zines can be read here.

The resource fair was originally part of a mission of the Union Chapel UCC to complete a third event obligation with the Center for Outreach in Aging, Alzheimer’s and Community Health (COAACH) program at NC A&T State University. In 2019, the first two events occurred at the church and featured topics of later in life challenges in collaboration with the Elder Justice Project as well as the “ABCs of Dementia,” in collaboration with Therapeutic Alternatives.

“What we’re really trying to do is set some things in place, so that when we do come out of this pandemic we will be able to address some issues, specifically in East Burlington,” Vanhook said.

For more information on this partnership and local available resources, you can visit the as the ARC continues its outreach efforts during the pandemic. Many Elon alumni have been collaborating with the ARC to continue this outreach and build community resilience. This includes Donna Vanhook ‘07, womanist community organizer ARC; Tyronna Hooker ‘09, Alamance Achieves executive director; Rebecca Carlson ‘17,�� chair of ARC; Mariatu Okonofua ‘19, Alamance Achieves Kenan Scholar; Sally Gordon ‘18, United Way of Alamance County; and �þ��� Alumni Engagement Officer Ashtyn Foddrell ‘19 (community organizer).

The �þ��� Kitchen at �þ��� (CKEU) is an on-campus service opportunity offered to Elon students and staff through the Kernodle Center for Service Learning and Community Engagement. Alongside services, �þ��� Kitchen collects unserved food from various partners for volunteers to prepare and deliver to those in the Burlington community who are in need of food.

Contino works for Caroline Redick,��sustainability coordinator for Elon Dining. Reddick recently organized a collaboration between �þ��� Kitchen and Elon Dining. This is the collaboration that made this year’s reusable to go boxes possible, which was an effort to help reduce waste on campus. This collaboration also allows Contino to spend half of her internship position working with �þ��� Kitchen and the other half working with Elon Dining. Part of her position includes conducting research for the events that Elon dining hosts throughout the year, like their week of “plant forward”-themed meals.

“We did some research on recipes and also an educational component to tell people why eating plant forward means not exclusively vegetarian, but it means like, plant forward as in you need like more vegetables to lower your carbon footprint, so you’re consuming less meat,” Contino said.

Contino said this is actually her favorite part of the job. With events like the “plant forward”-themed meals, Contino and Redick often organize cart displays so Elon students can not only see where their food is coming from, but also see how it impacts the environment. For one of these events, Contino researched the land use, water use and carbon footprint of different types of milk. Elon students then got to try the milk and visually see on a graph the impacts each milk type has on the environment.

“We had an activity where they had to figure out or guess which milk resulted in which impact,” Contino said. “It was cool to see how people thought one thing but it was actually another and so then you have the educational component where you can tell them about why that is.”

In addition to her research and hosting activities to educate her peers on various topics concerning sustainability, Contino spends her time working with �þ��� Kitchen exclusively during the cooking shift. With this, Contino has learned sustainable cooking practices and proper safety protocols. This way, when volunteers come to �þ��� Kitchen to cook and prep meals before they are delivered to the community, Contino can assist the volunteers and answer their questions about the types of people the food is going to and what those organizations do.

“It’s connecting. I think it connects the students with their communities, so they get out of the ‘Elon bubble,’ so to speak,” Contino said. “It’s really great for students to learn about how food is grown, but also what it means to provide one free meal to a group of people once a week — what that means for them and how that impacts their community.”

Prior to beginning her internship, Contino helped with hurricane relief efforts last year through Elon Volunteers! After Hurricane Florence hit, she went to Fayetteville to help package meals for those in need. While Contino had previous experiences with Elon Volunteers! and the Kernodle Center, this internship was her first exposure to �þ��� Kitchen. Contino said this experience has completely transformed her idea of not only what �þ��� Kitchen is, but also what sustainability really means for the environment.

“I just like love that I’m able to like make connections with where my food comes from before I put it in my mouth, because I feel like people today are really disconnected from that,” Contino said.

This position has reminded Contino that serving a campus is a much bigger operation than most people realize.

“I didn’t fully have a grasp on how big a scale it is to do this full operation,” Contino said. “Talking to the chefs actually in the back is really cool, talking about the type of work they do and they’re real people. They serve you food behind a barrier, but everyone who works for Elon Dining is a real person.”

More recently, under the collaboration of �þ��� Kitchen and Elon Dining, Contino has worked on a “reduce, reuse, recaffeinate” initiative. This means that now all on-campus coffee shops except for Irazu will give you a 30-cent discount if you bring your own reusable mug for coffee. She has also worked on a project to reduce the sugar intake of Elon students by exchanging offerings from the soda machines in the various dining halls with sweet teas, lemonade, juice, Powerade, and other drinks with less sugar.

Anyone interested in volunteering with �þ��� Kitchen upon returning to campus should sign up for the Kernodle Center emails. Volunteers can choose to help with any of the following shifts: cooking alongside Elon Dining staff in the Lakeside Kitchen, delivering meals to Allied Churches of Alamance County and food resourcing at Elon’s Loy Farm.

Volunteers go out to the farm on Sunday, cook the meals on Tuesday night and deliver them to the community on Wednesday mornings.

“Oh, 100 percent I would not be who I am without Kernodle. I guess on the EV! side of things — obviously they really helped me think more systematically more about my own privilege and think more about the reasons why I’m doing service. Of course there are benefits of service for the volunteer, so sort of really thinking about that mutual relationship and the motto: with not for the community. I still use that to this day when I’m thinking about my research or I’m going to med school next year and that’s a really big thing of like I want to be with my patients during their illness and not just sort of serving them from a distance. I want to walk step by step alongside them so that has really influenced my approach to how I’m going into medicine,” Holdren said.

The 2018 graduate was an anthropology and public health double major with a minor in chemistry. In the fall of her freshman year, Holdren worked as an office manager for the Kernodle Center. After doing a lot of service in high school, she knew she wanted to be involved in the office in some way. She slowly got involved in the blood drives Elon Volunteers! hosted and then lead an alternative break trip her junior year. Holdren then became the executive director of outreach and collaboration for the Kernodle Center as a senior.

In this position, Holdren worked to be more intentional about creating a family in EV! as well as being more intentional about how the center was connecting the academic component to the actual service work and then to the community partners. Holdren helped ensure there was dialogue surrounding the work the center was frequently engaging in as opposed to students just going in and doing the service work without reflection.

“Kernodle already does it so well, to not just go in and lead, but also sort of like tying in more of what are you guys talking about in your classes that is relevant to this and how can we think more deeply about the systemic issues at play and how can we maybe connect what people are doing for internships or research or any of the other Elon experiences with service work,” Holdren said.

One of the projects Holdren worked at Elon was what she called a community partner fair. It was a roundtable event that mimicked Elon’s organization fair that helps inform students about the broad variety of organizations they can become a part of. The main focus of this event was to allow students to speak to the leaders of these community partners and have conversations about their needs and what volunteers can do to help fill those.

“I think we also really tried in our fall training to sort of make sure we’re talking about those systemic issues there too. We did a privilege walk in the spring with our EV leaders and sort of started looking more inward I think and acknowledging it’s like a continual process both in what we’re doing in the community and with ourselves and how we’re like educating ourselves and growing in our leadership and service to understand our privilege,” Holdren said.

In her role in the Kernodle Center, Holdren was more intentional, particularly when collaborating with other student organizations and offices. For example, she helped coordinate a presentation that the Kernodle Center offered with the social justice organization on campus, called DEEP hosted by the Center for Race, Ethnicity, & Diversity Education (CREDE). At this presentation, students would speak about the differences in their approaches to service.

“The social justice organization came from a completely systemic level of advocacy and political action while the Kernodle Center came from a service-oriented and service-driven organization. So it was about where those meet in the middle and how when you’re not thinking about the social justice aspects of service, service can go badly sometimes. I think we both sort of presented the idea of unintended consequences of service and how a social justice lens can hopefully eliminate that and can improve the way we’re approaching our service,” Holdren said.

All of Holdren’s work and efforts in the Kernodle Center led her to where she is now. Following graduation, Holdren traveled to Finland as the recipient of a Fulbright Study/Research Award, which was an extension of research she conducted as a Lumen Scholar at Elon. Holdren’s Lumen focus was on qualitative research with breastfeeding mothers in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). She interviewed these mothers about their experiences.

“It’s really challenging to breastfeed in a NICU. Often you can barely even hold the baby let alone breastfeed, and that just ends up really bad for the biological processes that start lactation and obviously takes a huge toll on the mental health of the family as well,” Holdren said.

Holdren knew that Nordic and Scandinavian countries were doing what is referred to as family-centered care, which can be more beneficial than some of the approaches in the U.S. Through the Fulbright program, Holdren spent a year in Finland performing a comparative study that consisted of interviews with Finnish mothers about their experiences with lactation. Her research was published with her mentor, Professor Cynthia Fair, and can be read

“That was a really wonderful year. I think coming from an anthropology background I’ve always really loved traveling. I did a lot of studying abroad at Elon, but I think the Kernodle Center just in the ways that they served as mentors and sounding boards for reflection, really helped me connect those dots between my interest in culture, medicine and health care, to my interest in traveling to other communities, my interest in service and my interest in research. I think they just really – along with everything else I’ve done – taught me how to tell a really good story about myself and that is a huge skill that helps with every aspect of life,” Holdren said.

Holdren is now at Columbia University in the Master of Science in Narrative Medicine program. This is a master’s degree program that only exists at Columbia and focuses on medical humanities with a method. Holdren engages in philosophy, literature and other coursework that is applied to the clinical encounter to ultimately build an understanding of how a clinician can get to know and empathize with their patients better. This is actually a program that Holdren discovered at Elon and for which she received funding from the National Science Foundation.

“I’ve had these two really nice years that have been really intellectually interesting and I’ve grown a lot throughout them. I think through both of these experiences I’ve definitely been reflecting on everything. I definitely feel like the office helped me contextualize why I wanted to go to med school and help me figure out those two years off which were really healthy for me. I think I just challenged a lot of the biases I may have held before,” Holdren said.

Holdren plans on attending med school after completing her master’s degree. She can’t thank the Kernodle Center enough for being a second family and the constant care the staff had for her on all levels.

“It’s both a community and a place where I really grew academically and personally so I’m just so grateful. I can’t thank everyone there enough,” Holdren said.

This partnership provides young students with an opportunity to improve their education and learn more about healthy lifestyles, while simultaneously providing Elon students, specifically those in human service studies, with first-hand experience in this field.

Reid is currently a lecturer in human service studies. She teaches seven classes a year and serves on various committees for the university. Teaching, however, is her number one priority.

Among the courses that Reid teaches is an intro to human service studies course that has a service-learning component. This is essentially what started the long and consistent partnership Elon now has with the PAYC.

When she first started �þ��� the course, Reid would have her students choose different places to do their volunteer hours and off-campus service-learning requirement. However, she soon decided that instead she wanted them to focus on work centered around a single project.

“I thought it would be more helpful for the community partner and more helpful for our students, to focus on one particular thing,” Reid said. “I have an affinity for the Positive Attitude Youth Center. I’ve known that director for 30 plus years. When I worked in juvenile justice, he was working with at-risk kids, so I really honor the work that they do at that center and I thought that my students would be able to contribute to that work.”

With this course, Elon students have 30 volunteer hours to complete individually. Over the years, Elon students have volunteered at the PAYC in a variety of ways, interacting with students anywhere from pre-k to middle school. Some Elon students tutor and help specifically in improving reading skills while others assist with homework assignments. Some even do physical play and teach the PAYC students dance and theater games. Elon students can visit the PAYC either during the day and assist in the classrooms or they can go volunteer with the center’s afternoon program during after-school hours.

This semester, Reid started bringing her class to the PAYC altogether as a group, twice a month.

“It just gives me an opportunity to watch my students interact with the students at PAYC,” Reid said. “It gives me an opportunity to talk to that partner while I’m there to see if we’re meeting those needs or if there are other things we could possibly be doing. It gives me time to connect.”

For Reid, the number one goal for this program is to improve the reading skills of the elementary students. She also hopes that the PAYC students are given the opportunity to interact with college students and feel comfortable in having important conversations about what college is like. This way, the PAYC students will be given the ability to look towards something in the future and become driven to set goals for themselves.

Similarly, Reid hopes that her Elon students are able to have an experience in a community outside of Elon, where there are actually a lot of protective factors in place. She wants her Elon students to ultimately see that even though this community might not have the largest amount of resources, there are people able to pull the resources that they do have together and still succeed.

“Just the other day when we were over there, one of my students had taught the girls a particular dance, getting them ready for a pep rally. It’s those kinds of moments,” Reid said. “You know there are a lot of different moments. And I’ve watched that partnership grow. I’ve watched that center grow to have this really good school that parents really depend on. The parents put so much trust into that organization and that is very special and if we can as Elon continue to support that organization, then that makes our partnership stronger. So it’s those things and just knowing that the kids are growing in safe environments and it’s allowing them to flourish.”

Reid is looking forward to seeing how she and her students can do more for the PAYC. Together, they want to help the PAYC grow programs that are beneficial to their students.

“If PAYC was not in the community I really I just don’t even know what would happen to these kids particularly after school,” Reid said.

Reid appreciates all that the Kernodle Center for Service Learning and Community Engagement has done in continuing to grow this partnership. Having the networking, initiative grants and constant support has made such a difference in what this partnership is capable of.

“One word? Impactful… in both ways,” Reid said. “It’s been impactful for I think all involved.”

Currently, many Elon students are participating internships at FAS. Human Service Studies and Public Health majors volunteer for their practicum, which requires them to complete approximately 100 hours at a public health or social services agency. However, anyone at Elon can become a volunteer at FAS, as the agency is always looking for volunteers and interns.

“I think it’s really great that Elon students go over to FAS because they like having them there, said Jo Crump ’21, the Leader in Collaborative Service student liaison between �þ��� and FAS. “FAS is understaffed, likely underfunded and overworked. It’s a really great cause and I think we need more people devoting their time to it.”

Elon students can work in various program positions at FAS. One example is with the court navigator program. In this position, Elon students guide those who are seeking a restraining order or protective order against their abuser. Volunteers are assigned to a client the morning of their court hearing, and they accompany them to the hearing to provide emotional support during the entire court process. In this role, the volunteer can help a client with the language and the process of the court, offering much-needed support throughout a difficult process.

Additionally, FAS has support groups for clients. Through these support groups, FAS provides childcare to help alleviate the burden placed upon family members who worry about getting someone to watch their child while they go get the help they need. Elon students, specifically those who enjoy working with kids or have any interest in child health or education, can volunteer to take care of the children during this time.

Volunteers also have the opportunity to work at the Family Justice Center shelter. In this role, volunteers can expect to help clean, get supplies for the clients, and engage in other maintenance types of activities that are needed for the shelter to run both smoothly and comfortably. In their downtime, volunteers can interact with clients, providing emotional support when necessary. Similarly, volunteers can go to the transitional housing site to help plant flowers and engage in other welcoming activities, to make the unfamiliar place feel more like a home for the clients.

There is a Crisis Line where volunteers can answer callers and respond to their personal situations whether they need immediate help, looking for advice, or cannot decide if they should leave their abuser. Along similar lines, there is a Legality Assessment Program hotline that needs volunteers, which provides clients with services both after hours and on weekends.

FAS has a supervised visitation program for parents who share custody of a child. In this program, the child visits with both parents either once a week or once a month at the Family Justice Center. Volunteers are needed to document what goes on during this visit and what the interactions between the child and the parents look like.

Along with these hands-on opportunities, volunteers are always needed to perform data and file entry around the office.

It is clear that Elon’s partnership with FAS provides students with a wide variety of opportunities to make a difference in the lives of those who have been impacted by domestic violence.

�þ��� who are interested in volunteering have to complete 20 hours of domestic violence training before they can work or complete an internship through FAS. This training takes place on the weekend and is usually held one or two times each semester. Because of this training requirement, FAS has recently struggled to get enough Elon students to volunteer. Crump said the training requirement can be intimidating, but it plays a valuable role.

“I think the 20 hours can sound really intense for a lot of people and it is a huge commitment, but it’s important because you’re dealing with super heavy topics,” Crump said. “You do really learn a lot about not even just women globally, but about how domestic violence happens anywhere and could happen to anyone. So if you have any interest whatsoever, do it.”

As the liaison between Elon and FAS, Crump coordinates volunteer work. She recruits volunteers on campus, connects them with opportunities that relate to what they are passionate about, validates service hours, and helps plan advocacy events on campus.

“I’m a public health major and a lot of people are starting to see violence against women as a growing public health issue,” she said. “I’m overall really passionate about women’s reproductive health and rights and I thought that this would be a good opportunity for me to get basic skills down because that’s part of what this type of career requires. I wanted to learn about real things people are experiencing in the community. I also wanted to be in a setting where I was still going to meet students and interact with them, so I thought shadowing the prevention coordinator was perfect.”

Some of the events Crump has helped coordinate include Take Back the Night, which was an open mic night sponsored by Alpha Chi Omega. This gave students an opportunity to come forward and share their domestic violence stories. Crump also helped host a series in October, which was domestic violence awareness month. The Gender and LGBTQIA center was there to support the event and provide students who participated with resources and pamphlets about domestic violence. There was also an advocate at the event in case anything in the movie or pamphlet became triggering for any of the attendees.

In addition, Crump assists FAS in coordinating off-campus events. FAS recently held its candlelight vigil, an annual ceremony held each fall. This event happens outside the Alamance County courthouse in Graham and honors the lives lost to domestic violence in North Carolina. The vigil features a community speaker and a candle ceremony where names are read, candles are lit and bells are rung for each domestic violence victim.

“Just having FAS here in the community makes a difference because it gives people who are experiencing these issues a place to go and people to talk to, all with total confidentiality,” Crump said. “Basically the mantra we go by is if someone comes in and says they’re being abused at home, we believe them. I just think that is so powerful in itself. Individuals become really empowered by that because they have to make these decisions for themselves. We are really just there as support along the way.”

Anyone interested in volunteering or getting involved with this partnership in any way, should email From there, Crump will reach out to the prevention coordinator at and will organize volunteer opportunities. Interested students can also go to the GLC or the Kernodle Center in upstairs Moseley for more information about the opportunities this partnership offers.

“I honestly have loved getting to meet everyone over at FAS,” Crump said. “I feel like I’ve met really great people through Elon Volunteers! And I look forward to my office hours every week because there’s a lot of really great staff there and I think that through this position I’ve met a lot of people who really want to see me succeed. Overall, I’ve gotten a lot of unexpected friends and great mentors out of this experience.”

Greenberg’s story began in the sixth grade, where she was involved in the Best Buddies program. Best Buddies is an international nonprofit organization that creates opportunities for friendship and leadership development for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Greenberg was the president of her high school’s chapter of Best Buddies for three years before interning with the national organization for two years in New York.

“I came to Elon specifically looking for that, for this type of work and involvement, so I joined Elon Buddies during my freshman year at Elon,” Greenberg said.

Falling under the umbrella of Elon Volunteers!, Elon Buddies pairs students and volunteers from Elon with Alamance Community College students with developmental disabilities. Elon Buddies hosts a variety of activities such as prom, Zumba classes and movie nights throughout the year. Greenberg currently serves as co-coordinator of the program.

“We really plan activities to create that space of inclusion and to just treat people as they should be treated no matter what,” Greenberg said.

Greenberg first applied for the Elon Buddies coordinator position during her sophomore year and has served in that role since. At the same time, she was on the lead team for Elon Special Olympics and has been the organization’s coordinator since last fall.

Special Olympics is similar to Elon Buddies in that it also focuses on creating an inclusive environment for everyone. However, Special Olympics creates inclusive environments for students with developmental disabilities through the use of intramural sports and other athletic opportunities.

“Our main event for Special Olympics is Spring Games,” Greenberg said. “My sophomore year we had almost 200 people attend with both athletes and volunteers. We took over the entire football field. It’s a huge annual event with track and field activities, including throwing, jumping, etc. It’s really amazing. It’s a super inclusive day, and everybody gets to come out and have fun and partake in that.”

Greenberg has always had a passion for this type of work because she believes people with disabilities are often overlooked. It’s something that has always baffled her. It’s something that she has always wanted to do something about. This is what originally brought her to the Best Buddies program in sixth grade and is what led her to continue that work at Elon.

“Why do we treat people differently because of small differences? My thing is that you always focus on the abilities of the people, not their disabilities,” Greenberg said. “It’s just amazing to see what people can do when you give them a shot and believe in them.”

Greenberg has seen firsthand how organizations like Elon Buddies and Special Olympics can have a direct impact on people’s lives. She says she was especially touched by what she saw from a group of high school students who volunteered at a past Special Olympics event.

“There was a point in the event where [the high school students] became very enthusiastic toward the athletes, cheering them on and screaming for them at the top of their lungs,” Greenberg said. “They went from standing in the corner with their arms crossed, unhappy that they had to wake up early on a Friday, to really getting involved, giving athletes piggyback rides and dancing with them in the field. Seeing that, seeing everybody come together, putting aside their differences and being there for each other… I think that’s really what it’s about at the end of the day.”

Greenberg’s passion shows in her work for both Special Olympics and Elon Buddies. As a student leader for Elon Buddies, Greenberg plans meetings and events, reserves rooms and vans to pick up students from Alamance Community College, sets up the planned activities, coordinates volunteers and completes other administrative work for the organization. For Special Olympics, she is responsible for making Elon students aware of volunteer opportunities, recruiting volunteers, sending emails and making sure each event runs smoothly.

“I think many people at Elon don’t know we’re out here doing all of this volunteer work that we do,” Greenberg said. “It’s such a hidden gem on campus. If this is something students are interested in, they just have to look into EV! organizations and see what they have to offer.”

For students interested in getting involved in any of the EV! organizations, visit the Elon Volunteers! website, stop by Moseley Center 230 or contact the Kernodle Center. Those who are interested in Elon Buddies or Special Olympics should email either elonbuddies@elon.edu or elonspecialolympics@elon.edu for more information about how to get involved.

Prior to the creation of Elon Votes!, Elon had issues with voter registration groups coming onto campus trying to register students while walking to classes.

“There were issues with this because most of the time these groups were only handing out North Carolina voter registration forms,” Snyder said. “Every single state has a different registration situation, so only having North Carolina forms meant that students could only register in North Carolina. They didn’t always make this clear to students, so some of them were signing these forms, first years especially, unbeknownst to them that it was a North Carolina registration. Then to further that, some of those organizations were partisan or didn’t accurately see through the final registration process.”

Elon decided to create an on-campus Elon affiliated voter registration organization that was nonpartisan and would provide students from all 50 states with the information they needed to both register and vote correctly.

Elon Votes! partners with the , which was founded by the family of Andrew Goodman, one of three college students killed during Freedom Summer, the voter registration project during the Civil Rights Era that focused on registering African Americans to vote in Mississippi.

Both Snyder and Sheetz have attended conferences through the Andrew Goodman Foundation. At these conferences, they’ve learned about leadership development and what other schools are doing in terms of voter registration and civic engagement.

With the help of this foundation, Elon Votes! has been a resource to help students easily and legally register to vote.�� Elon supports the effort with the TurboVote system that helps Snyder and Sheetz manage all of the different laws for the students coming from all 50 states. Elon Votes! also has stamps available for students when mailing ballots/voter registration paperwork and they’re currently working on gathering a list of notaries for absentee ballots as well.

The organization works throughout to host various events geared toward civic engagement and the events of modern-day politics.

“We do some programming surrounding major political events,” Sheetz said. “We just had one for the democratic debate watch party. We’ll have them for all the upcoming debates as long as it works for the academic calendar. We had them for State of the Union Address. We’ll have one on election night. Really any major thing where we sense students want to watch or get involved, we’ll provide a space for them to do that.”

Snyder and Sheetz view Elon Votes! as a way to continue their passion for democracy, voting and civic engagement. Snyder came to Elon prepared to major in business, but quickly realized she wanted to pursue something else. After attending a conference about civic engagement on college campuses and realizing she was passionate about politics, Snyder found Elon Votes!

“I realized it wasn’t just a hobby, it could be a huge part of my life,” she said. “I’ve always loved voting and through various conversations, I started learning more about Elon Votes! and its nonpartisan mission. I think voting is an incredible, incredible part of our democracy and because I was so passionate about it, I decided to apply for the coordinator position. I’m very fortunate that through a series of things I ended up here with this organization.”

Sheetz had a similar experience.

“I was originally a political science/policy studies major, but I realized that I didn’t love intensely studying it like I thought I would,” Sheetz said. “I ended up finding a couple of other majors that I loved more. I almost felt like I was betraying myself. I loved political science, why am I not doing this? But then when I started to have that conflict with myself, Elon Votes! started to do a lot of stuff with the midterms. I was getting engaged then and I saw that as a way to balance what I love, even though it wasn’t what I was studying.”

Elon Votes! falls under the umbrella Elon Volunteers, and Civic Engagement Director Sophie Gerth, who works closely with Elon Votes! There are also various faculty, staff and students on Elon’s political engagement workgroup who collaborate with the organization.

“It’s just an amazing group of dedicated people who are so passionate and so driven. It is such a good environment. The work we do is important, but it’s the people we work with, which is also a huge part of why I’m involved with this.”

“My favorite part about this is there is only one political science professor in the workgroup. It’s more than political science. It’s applicable to everyone,” Sheetz said.

Elon Votes! is planning various events and discussions throughout the year while keeping the 2020 election in mind. Snyder and Sheetz are very excited for what’s ahead.

“It’s going to be big,” Snyder said.

Following North Carolina’s passage of a new voter ID law that will take effect in 2020, the university is now offering a special Elon Phoenix Voter Card. �þ��� who plan to vote in North Carolina who do not have a North Carolina issued driver license or any of other form of ID required by the state board of elections can obtain this card. �þ��� can pick up their Elon Phoenix Voter Card from the Phoenix Card office. Once students obtain this card, it will serve as their Phoenix Card and full-time student ID.

According to the National Study of Learning, Voting, And Engagement (NSLVE), a total of 10.7 percent of Elon students voted in the 2014 midterm elections. That number nearly tripled for the 2018 midterm elections –�� 29.4 percent of Elon students cast their ballots last year. This means that Elon’s voter turnout is already on the rise, which would not be possible without the efforts of Elon Votes!

To make all of these voting opportunities and events possible for Elon students, the organization is constantly looking for volunteers. While Elon Votes! is not a club that has weekly meetings, it is a non-partisan initiative that functions off a volunteer base.

“That’s what makes us different. Of course, as individuals, we have our own political ideologies, but as a group we’re nonpartisan,” Snyder said.

Elon Votes! is always in need of volunteers to work various events, help with college coffee, stuff mailboxes with postcards, etc. With more events and new forms of branding, they are hoping to expand their volunteer base.

If students or staff are interested in hearing more about how they can get involved with this organization or have any questions related to voting and civic engagement, feel free to stop by the Kernodle Center or email elonvotes@elon.edu. Additional information can be found on the group’s��website.