Making a positive difference can seem like a daunting task. Thankfully, this year Berkeley students have even more support in achieving this goal than ever before. Berkeley has welcomed a new Director of Community Engagement and Service Learning, Kim Graham Lawless, whose many roles include listening to students’ ideas for community service and helping them become involved with meaningful service opportunities. Lawless described her job as “finding out what students are passionate about and helping them to translate that into something to help the community.”

Lawless was a member of the founding team of a school in Washington, D.C. that helps minority students from low-income families go to college, many of them the first in their family to do so. As a Tampa native, she is excited to be back and working at Berkeley. Her goal is to “help the students at Berkeley figure out how they can make a difference in the world and then impact this community that I love so much.” Along with helping students establish their own community service projects, Lawless works with members of the Community Service Council to reach the student body.

The Community Service Council is a group of Berkeley students which documents and organizes students’ service hours, helps bring awareness to service opportunities in the community and implements service ideas from their classmates. According to Junior Rachel Weinbren, one of the co-heads of the council, the council is “working on getting a larger presence in the community [and] to help people go above and beyond” in their volunteer experiences. The other co-head of the Community Service Council, Senior Karaghen Hudson added “One of the main goals this year is highlighting various community service-sponsored activities around campus and then outside of school.”

Members of the council want Berkeley students to find meaningful community service that they enjoy instead of just volunteering for the required hours. The Community Service Council urges fellow students to share their ideas for service projects and supports them in making these ideas a reality. Senior Ryan Shikarpuri, a member of the council, looks forward to a busy year in which the council will be “establishing a lot of lasting programs that Berkeley is going to be able to give back with for years to come.”

Berkeley has always placed an emphasis on the importance of community service, and with the addition of Lawless and the continued work of the Community Service Council, more students can find interesting ways to be involved. This group has shown how rewarding community service and volunteering can be and how everyone can exemplify Berkeley’s motto: “Berkeley puts people in the world who make a positive difference.”