On October 21st, Engage Dallas hosted their third annual #1Day4Dallas fall day of service. 151 volunteers from all 11 Residential Commons spent their morning serving with 13 of our Community Partners in West and South Dallas.
The day started off with breakfast tacos from Bonton Farms, an urban farm located in South Dallas. The Engage Dallas Student Directors and SMUSH volunteers helped check in the participants, who then heard some inspiring words from SMU’s Associate Director for High-Impact Practices, Audryanna Reed.
Our volunteers were shuttled to our thirteen sites throughout the South and West Dallas communities. They served with After8toEducate, Austin Street Center, Brother Bill’s Helping Hand, Dallas Furniture Bank, Empowering the Masses, Genesis Women’s Shelter & Support, Greenspace Dallas, Jubilee Park Community Center, Legacy Cares, Our Saviour Community Gardens, Sunny South Community Garden, The Bridge Homeless Recovery Center, and Voice of Hope.
Staff and faculty volunteered alongside our students, participating in donation sorting, window cleaning, gardening, furniture building, and many other tasks. Volunteers were able to learn about the Community Partner they were working with, gaining a better understanding of the challenges the community is facing and the ways these organizations are supporting and enriching their neighborhoods.
Student feedback included excitement about working together with their peers, learning about the Community Partners, and helping the organizations in tangible ways. They enjoyed interacting with the employees at each site as well as the individuals who were receiving assistance. It was also an opportunity for students to learn more about the history of South and West Dallas and how that has impacted those who live there.
One student shared that “seeing people from different aspects of life (SMU or community volunteers) come together to achieve a common goal was very impactful. It’s nice to see that we can set aside our differences to work together to achieve more.”
Thank you to all who served with Engage Dallas and made the third annual #1Day4Dallas a success! We invite participants to check back with their Commons to see the upcoming monthly events and continue to serve.
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Here’s what we discovered since our modest beginning in October 2020: While our community partners enjoy having Engage Dallas groups come on-site and serve alongside them, sometimes they need only one or two students — not an entire group.
While Engage Dallas still offers monthly, group service through the Residential Commons, solo service is a type of 
Mendez, ‘22, a graduate student in the M.Ed. in Higher Education program shares that Phase II differs significantly from Phase I because the focus is truly just South and West Dallas so various local sources had to be researched, evaluated, and synthesized for the creation of Phase II while Phase I was a bit broader. Through this research opportunity, one valuable takeaway for Mendez was the importance of learning about the history of her community, as she is a resident of West Dallas.
We invite you to journey with us through time. Phase II presents a chronological dive into the history of South and West Dallas. Our trip commences in the year 1865 and we progresses forward until we are back in 2021. We cover topics very familiar like the State Fair of Texas and maybe some that are less familiar, like the contributions of Felix H. Lozada, Jr. As you journey through the timeline, you will be able to read a short highlight about the event and then click into it to learn even more. You may also choose to “hop through history” and follow the timeline of specific events and see how they are connected through history.
Peck ‘21, an undergraduate student studying Public Policy and Political Science, found this research opportunity particularly valuable because she was given the freedom to dive deeper into many diverse subjects in Dallas history, painting a realistic picture of South and West Dallas history as a whole. She was able to draw connections between this research and her future career goals by studying how federal policies and court decisions, like Brown v. Board, were enacted in Dallas, and how individuals were uniquely affected by them.