Offering Opportunities for Students, ATLAS Hosts Volunteer Fair
Dominion hosted their second Volunteer Fair coordinated by ATLAS, the school’s PTO organization, on November 10th in the media center. Offering volunteer opportunities from tutoring to packing food, 13 different local volunteer groups attended giving students the ability to sign up to serve their community at the fair.
The predicted annual event more than doubled in size since the first fair in 2019 which only hosted 5 groups. Lauren Comi, coordinator of the event, hopes that students can find a good fit for them and that the groups find students to volunteer with them. “We really expanded our reach, and we have a lot more students attending this time; we were able to really provide a wider variety of organizations so that kids can find something that they’re interested in,” Comi said.
The Volunteer Fair offered many opportunities for students to get involved in the community with a variety of programs from tutoring to packing food. Comi said, “We are hoping that students can find a good fit for them to volunteer and we’re hoping that these well deserved groups can find students to volunteer and even parents can become aware of their programs.”
Comi mentioned how important Dr. Brewer finds it for students to give back and she said it’s important for kids to learn how they can do so and make it a part of their everyday life. Drew Peterson, a sophomore, found the fair “very enjoyable” as there were many options for volunteering. “I’m interested in getting volunteer hours and helping my community,” he said.
Volunteer hours are very important to many students for college applications and the Volunteer Fair offered an easy way to get started on just that. Junior Steven Ferevari (DHS Press producer) said that students should volunteer to “open up their minds to different things, see what interests they want to be in for college and beyond that, meet more people, and get more references.”
Sophomores Hooria Tahir and Kelly Tran found the event enjoyable and informative. “There’s a lot of types of volunteer hours that I hadn’t really thought about before like [Sunrise Senior Living], and I think it’s really helpful for people who haven’t volunteered before; seeing that there’s more than one way to volunteer,” Tahir said.
The tables were busy during the entire hour and a half the event was functioning. “This is a really awesome turnout, with a lot of students who are thinking about how they might be able to make their life significant by giving some of their time and talent to other people who really, without those volunteer efforts, will have unmet needs,” Brewer said.
