Civic Engagement Activities

Amanda Griffin: Making a Difference

Amanda Griffin is studying Business Administration on UMA’s Augusta campus, but she is sure to make time to help out with the campus’ food share program. Once a week, Amanda and other UMA Augusta students meet to pick up food from the Augusta Food Bank. This food is then brought to the campus and shared between the on-campus food pantry in the Randall Student Center, the residential hall, and the athletics program! 

To Amanda, civic engagement means “making a difference – whether small or big – in your community to help those around you,” and UMA’s food share program definitely makes a difference. Many college students face food insecurity, and this program helps students to have easy, free access to food so that they can focus on work and study.

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Kayla Kalel: Addressing Injustice in the Community

Working towards community betterment is an extremely important aspect of Kayla Kalel’s life. “For as long as people in my community that I love and care deeply about continue to die preventable deaths from overdoses, and for as long as some of my friends, family members and folks that I have met in the community are incarcerated for non-violent crimes, leaving their children alone to fend for themselves,” she says, “I consider it my obligation to advocate to ensure our community creates the type of community connection and resources all of us need to be our best selves.”

On top of working towards a degree in interdisciplinary studies with intersections between criminal justice reform advocacy and public policy at UMA Bangor, Kayla is involved with numerous organizations and projects that work to improve the lives of community members. She serves on the board of directors for Food AND Medicine, the Maine Coalition for Sensible Drug Policy, and the Maine State Breastfeeding Coalition, and is co-founder of the Birth Justice Collective. Kayla also volunteers with the Bangor Area Recovery Network and helps to increase access to Narcan Kits. Additionally, she is the project co-coordinator for “Stories of Incarceration: The Penobscot County Jail Storytelling Project” and was recently featured on a podcast discussing how the carceral system impacts families and parenting.

To Kayla, “civic engagement is taking the opportunity to give back to the community. It’s seeing a need or an injustice, and then taking steps to make others aware of the injustice, and advocating in various ways to ensure it’s changed.” She adds that “civic engagement also means noticing voices in the community that are not being heard for various reasons, finding out why they are not being heard, and then creating equity and creating space to ensure these folks are part of the conversation and are part of decision making within their community.”

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Alicia Bell: Sharing Skills and Giving Back

Alicia Bell is pursuing a BA in Art at UMA and spends her time between both the Augusta and Bangor campuses. She is also using her creative and artistic skills to help her community as the secretary of the Bedtime Quilters in Bucksport and a member of the Pine Tree Quilting Guild. Alicia says that, when creating a quilt, “every member in the group makes a block, and it is put together with hard work, dedication, and lots of bright colors for love” before the quilt is donated to a local community shelter. By sharing her skills, Alicia has been able to give back and help people in need. “Giving back to the community is essential to me,” she says, “because the community helps me live a safe life.”

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UMA students returned from a six-day Service Trip to Fayette County, West Virginia last week

While there, they painted the porch of a local woman and cleaned, organized, and painted the volunteer dorms for the Southern Appalachian Labor School – a local non-profit that provides resources to address food insecurity, housing, emergency shelters, and afterschool programs in the area. Amanda Griffin, Anaïs Gallaudec, Cassie Bates, Charlene Beringer, Juliette Heno, Léa Blanchard, and Lori Summers participated.

In addition to their service work, they took a tour of an exhibition coal mine, rode a jet boat up the New River Gorge, and learned all the verses to John Denver’s “Country Roads, Take Me Home,” which they sang on stage with a local musician, Billy Payne.

Amanda Griffin reflected on the experience, “The UMA service trip to West Virginia was eye opening to the situation of what people are experiencing down there and the great need the communities are in. We experienced a lot of different excitement from various painting projects, playing with the local kids, and a day of adventure exploring the area. We all worked well together and bonded as a group from the beginning to end, and fond memories and friendships were made.”

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Students from 6 Maine institutions of higher education volunteer with CA$H Maine

For Alex Ozols, a student at Colby College, and the other student volunteers at CA$H tax sites around the state, volunteering with CA$H Maine this year provided both a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. Students from six schools came together virtually this year to provide free tax preparation and share money management resources with Mainers statewide. CA$H Maine worked with partner programs at colleges across Maine to recruit the students’ support. University of Maine at Augusta (UMA), University of Southern Maine (USM), Colby College, Bates College, Central Maine Community College (CMCC) and University of Maine Farmington (UMF) all participated in this year’s effort to provide free tax preparation to community members.

Students at UMA found CA$H Maine through the Accounting Program and Professors Thomas Giordano and Gary Page. Jessica Parks and Leah Kovitch, both students in the accounting program, are interested in going into the accounting profession after graduation. Jessica reflects that her favorite part about volunteering was “getting to meet others who had worked in the accounting field and getting to ask them questions.” Through her volunteer work, Jessica was able to do an informational interview with a volunteer working in her field and practice her accounting skills.

Professor Giordano shares that for UMA Accounting students, “It has been a great opportunity for students to actually prepare tax returns while engaging with real tax data.” Giordano also says that “volunteering is an important aspect of being a responsible accounting professional.”

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University Credit Union presents checks to University of Maine at Augusta Campus Food Pantries

University Credit Union (UCU) presented checks to the University of Maine at Augusta (UMA) totaling $1,710.00 for the student-run food pantries on UMA’s Augusta and Bangor campuses.

The Augusta Campus check of $1,010.00 was presented to UMA’s Student Government Association officers Salvatore Cardinale, Bethanie Lovely, and Cole Winslow for its student-run campus food pantry, the Community Cupboard. A check in the amount of $700.00 was presented to Alissa Gervais, UMA Coordinator of Student Life and Alex Smith, UMA Pantry Student Worker for the student-run Bangor Campus Food for Thought pantry.

Through its Ending Hunger on Campus in Maine campaign, UCU raised $11,433.88 in donations for University of Maine System student-organized and campus-sanctioned food pantries. UCU matched this amount for a total donation of $22,867.76 to eight food pantries on campuses within the University of Maine System.

This marked the third year of UCU’s Ending Hunger on Campus in Maine campaign “to bring attention to student food insecurity in Maine and to recognize student food pantries for tackling the problem head-on.” From November to December 2019, community members were encouraged to donate online through UCU’s website, or by stopping by or mailing a check to any UCU branch. Donors could choose to specify a campus food pantry and non-designated contributions were distributed among the eight pantries.

The donations from UCU will allow the Community Cupboard and the Food For Thought pantry to supplement their offerings. Current supplies are obtained through funding from the Hunger Dialogue Grant, as well as SGA funds allocated to the Community Cupboard and in-kind and monetary donations to the Food for Thought pantry.

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