Breken Ballard, dietetics and nutrition junior, and J’undra Pegues, biology sophomore, try to piece together information from a tombstone dating back to the 1800s. Students help clean up, add temporary markers and record names for a database at the grave yard at the Philadelphia Missionary Baptist Church of Oxford as part of the Big Event.
The Big Event looks to promote their annual day of service through One Big Week. Members of Big Event committees will be at the Union Plaza from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday through Thursday this week.
This is the second year the Big Event has held One Big Week. Big Event co-director Caroline Loveless said last year’s co-directors developed the idea after thinking of ways to register more volunteers.
“One Big Week was initially a way to increase participation for the Big Event,” she said. “As last year’s directors Madison Coburn and Kristin Volker began to brainstorm ideas, they thought it would be unique and special for us to remind students how they can become involved in community service.”
Co-Director of Outreach for the Big Event Austin Dean said there will be laptops set up throughout the week to allow students to register for the service day. Dean said that while they will be promoting registration, there is also another goal for the week. Each day of One Big Week, the Big Event will promote various service organizations in the Ole Miss, Oxford and Lafayette communities.
“We’ll have laptops available so that students can register right then and there,” Dean said. “However, it really is so much more than that. One Big Week is from November 17th through the 20th, and each day, we are spotlighting a different service group that is either on campus or in the Oxford-Lafayette community.”
William Kneip, co-director for finance and fundraising, said the members of the Big Event executive board and committees wanted to host organizations that are well known and introduce students to lesser known organizations.
“We wanted to include organizations that are both known and unknown to the student body and organizations that we can also have the opportunity as students to say thank you to,” he said.
Loveless said she thought hosting these different organizations would be a free, helpful way to advertise organizations that do not receive much funding.
“As we have experienced with Big Event, on-campus community service organizations do not receive much funding from the university,” she said. “Therefore, it is hard to buy promotional items and advertisements. We felt like partnering with on-campus service groups would be a cost-free way to advertise their organizations. Also, many students are not fully aware of the goals and hopes for these individual organizations, so we feel like partnering with them can only increase the amount of students we can reach.”
This year, One Big Week will partner with Adopt-a-Basket, Lovepacks, Leapfrog and RebelTHON.
Dean said students can get involved in One Big Week by participating in a letter drive.
“That’s a way that students can send a letter to someone they may know just asking for whatever donation they can make to ensure that Big Event can reach out and help as many people as we possibly can,” Dean said.
Kelly Savage, one of the directors of public relations and marketing, said students will also have other opportunities to get involved in One Big Week.
“We’re looking for students to get involved on social media and mostly by signing up to participate for the Big Event in the spring and encouraging their peers to do the same,” Savage said.
The Big Event will be held Saturday, March 28. Those interested in volunteering can learn more about the Big Event by following @olemissbigevent on Twitter and Instagram and UM Big Event on Facebook. People can also visit olemissbigevent.com for more information.
