Soccer chips in for Earth Day community service event

Ducks Give Back: Part 1; The University of Oregon women’s soccer team will be performing three community service events this spring. First, the Ducks volunteered at the Earth Day community service event on Earth Day, April 22. Below, freshman ShayLee Miner catalogues her team’s community service efforts in the first of a three-part series to goducks.com. Miner is a native of Junction City, Ore., who led the team in points last fall.

By ShayLee Miner
Freshman, Oregon women’s soccer

The first community service project that our team did was the Earth Day community service event, which was put on by the University of Oregon and the city of Eugene. The Earth Day event had a collection of tasks for us to complete and divided us into separate groups; tree planting, trash pick up, tree inventory and the food drive. Each group was given brief instructions of what they were to do during the day.

In the tree planting group, there was an instructor who led the volunteers through the community to each different planting sites. Each volunteer was able to contribute to planting a tree. There were shovels provided to be used for digging marked areas where the trees where to be planted. The new trees could only be planted in specific locations. The group of girls from our team that did the tree planting walked around the community to look for the select marked areas to start digging a hole for the tree would be planted. A total of five trees were planted. The tree planters gave new life to the community and environment by replacing the old weatherworn trees with new healthy ones.

Another group that some of our team was divided into was the trash pick-up. This group went all around the community to pick up trash others had left behind. They were fitted with a trash bag, gloves, and some had trash grabbers. Although this task may not have sounded the most enjoyable, we were able to use it to give back and better our community by making it a much cleaner place. Also, picking up left over trash can help our environment by collecting the recyclable materials and properly disposing of them.

Tree Inventory was another group we were divided into. The girls were to walk through the community with a map of all the trees that were supposed to be there. Then they were to record if there was any potential hazards with the tree or if the tree was damaged. The purpose of this group was to make sure that the trees were not in any dangerous position to potentially harm an individual or a house/building. Also, they were to record if there was any damage done to the tree that had happened possibly from harsh weather conditions or other things that could harm a tree.

The last group that was involved in the Earth Day Community Service event was the food drive. The girls in this group had to go through the community, house to house, to ask if anyone was willing to donate a non-perishable food item. The food collected went to a food bank that opens itself once a week to all students in need.

The Earth Day Community Service project was a great way for us to give back to the community. From planting trees to picking up trash, we all were able to help better our community.