USC Marshall School of Business

Wherever Marshall students go, they bring their energy, work ethic and savvy organizational skills. This was especially true on a recent Saturday when Marshall students took part in the fourth annual Marshall Community Service Day, dispersing across Los Angeles to plant trees, clean up beaches and distribute groceries.

Approximately 200 students, faculty, staff, and alumni gathered on March 27 to take part in community service projects around the Los Angeles area in an event sponsored by the USC Marshall Dean Ellis' office with Marshall Undergraduate Student Services, and planned by student organization Marshall Outreach and Volunteer Entrepreneurs (MOVE).

Members of MOVE regularly participate in community service events and learn how to relate their service with what they learn in their business classes.

Early Saturday morning, volunteers first listened to the keynote speaker, James Owens, who is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Management Communication at Marshall as well as the founder and CEO of The World is Just a Book Away, about his nonprofit organization’s efforts to educate children in developing countries by providing access to books.

"Many of the children we help have never seen books. With just $1 we can give a child a book and we can build an entire library for 400 children with $2500," Owens said.

"I saw how much people care about others and that this younger generation really wants to make a difference," Owens said of the Marshall Community Service Day student-run volunteer effort. "I was really impressed and inspired at the same time by the numbers of people, by their energy, by their enthusiasm."

MOVE's director of publicity, senior Jennifer Ho, was also pleased with the student turnout. "It's been a joy to see the growing interest of the student body in exploring ethics and community service, which is MOVE's core mission," said Ho.

Staff members who participated were also impressed with the number of students who dedicated their Saturday to volunteering at the event. Russ Sommer, a student advisor for the undergraduate business administration program, said: "It was great to see so many Marshall students coming out and showing their concern for the greater Los Angeles area."

"This was a really nice way for me to interact with students since I don't get to see them on a daily basis," said Elena Martinez, a financial service specialist in Marshall’s Office of Finance and Administration.

Afterwards, the volunteers boarded trams to one of five different service sites. This year, the sites were:

• Heal the Bay Beach Cleanup
  Heal the Bay is a nonprofit organization whose mission is "making Southern California coastal waters and watersheds, including Santa Monica Bay, safe, healthy, and clean." Volunteers came to Santa Monica Beach, learned about ocean pollution and its consequences, and picked up trash.
• School Beautification
  Volunteers went to local neighborhood schools to help clean up and beautify the campuses. This project involved painting murals, cleaning the playgrounds, and gardening.
• TreePeople Tree Planting
  TreePeople, a nonprofit organization that "unites the power of trees, people, and technology to grow a sustainable future for Los Angeles," hosted volunteers at South Park, where they planted 30 trees around the area to create a greener environment for park goers.
• Union Rescue Mission
  The Union Rescue Mission is a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization that works to serve "men, women, and children experiencing homelessness." Volunteers worked on restoring the rooftop garden and distributed care packages to homeless people at various sites.
• Alleyway Cleanup
  Volunteers went to a local alleyway and picked up litter, painted the fences, and made the space more pleasant for residents.

Members of Marshall's Food Industry Management program also organized their own service event that day--spearheaded by Tami Lammers (FIM 2010)--loading and distributing 250 bags of groceries to families of high school students participating in USC's Neighborhood Academic Initiative.

Twenty-seven FIM students and faculty took part either by speaking to the 9th-12th graders about careers in the food industry or working the barbecue line, serving food donated by Farmer John, Bimbo Bakeries, Dreyer's Ice Cream, Pepsi Co., and Frito Lay.

Marshall students received positive feedback for all the sites and were also excited about how appreciative the local community was of their work. Junior Sandra Klanjian, who helped out at the tree-planting site, said she enjoyed that "lots of local community members, especially children, came to help us out. One of the children helping us actually told us that he wanted to come to USC so that he could participate in Marshall Community Service Day when he got older."

Not only did students feel appreciation from community members, but they also ended the experience feeling grateful. Michael Neagoe, also a junior, was at the beach cleanup site. "Going out there and actually seeing how much trash there was," he said, "showed that the beach should be a sacred place for us and we shouldn’t take it for granted."

"Marshall Community Service Day is a huge platform for students and organizations to show their accountability for the community," said junior Hersh Narayan. "We get to practice what we learn in our business classes about social responsibility."

To learn more about Professor Owens' work with The World is Just a Book Away, visit: http://www.justabookaway.org.

To learn more about MOVE, visit: http://marshallcommunityservice.com. For more information about Marshall’s Food Industry program, visit: http://www.marshall.usc.edu/execed/programs/fim/