Jamie Harris

During this volunteer opportunity with the Razorback Food Recovery foundation, I was able to learn about the community and the donations the community makes to help children have an amazing Easter Egg Hunt. The volunteers and I stuffed about 10 trash bags full of Easter eggs in 3 hours. I had the chance to talk with other peers in the UARK community that I had never met before. I was invited by my friend, Kendall, to help volunteer during this event and it was one of the best things for me to do. I ended up enjoying the conversations and figuring out how to stuff large candies into small eggs! I will definitely be volunteering for the UARK Foundation: Razorback Food Recovery again! This volunteer opportunity helped me realize that there is more to the Razorback community than just being on campus, and it provided me with a chance to help the surrounding community, which I will forever be thankful for.

I assisted Ribby, the Arkansas Baseball Mascot, to attend the Chief of Police Retirement event on 2-2-24, which was an official university event that allowed for multiple people impacted by Gary Crain after his 45 years of service at UAPD. This event was filmed and full of people who respected and cared for Gary Crain. It was very impactful to see how many people this man's life touched and influenced. He will be missed by so many people at the university. I may not have known him personally, but I could see the way people talked about him was very sentimental. I do not have any pictures at this event because my job is to stay and escort the mascot, Ribby, but it was an awesome event to attend and celebrate Gary Crain's years of commitment. There were so many jokes about his retirement that I left with a permanent smile on my face. I am so lucky that I get to volunteer to handle the mascots at these events because I get to see all the people who impact the university and how the mascots do that as well. It gives me great joy and honor to be in attendance with them.

For this event, I handled Big Red at a school dance team's end of football season team meeting at Har-Ber High School. During this event, we were informed that the dance team's coach had left unexpectedly and so did half of the team. Their spirits were down, but all the girls wanted was to keep the dance team going. Big Red was there for support, and as the handler I got to talk with the girls and their moms that attended and helped organize this end of season meeting. Looking back, I was very glad to be able to help the dance team experience having Big Red at their school, since the bell rung when we arrived all the kids were wondering why the mascot was there and found out it was the dance team. Hopefully us being there would give the dance team some popularity and traction to find and recruit more members for next year. This was an impactful experience for me because the teenagers never got to be with Big Red in a smaller situation other than game days, so they filmed dance videos and even made him do a cartwheel with them! It was a blast!! I do not have a picture from this event, but I do have a video of Big Red's cartwheel!!

Even through the rain, the racing environment was electric and definitely a volunteer opportunity I would attend again!

The Swap Til You Drop event was a lot of fun! I got to organize clothes and talk to a bunch of really cool people who love thrifting as much as I do! The UP traditions chair was very welcoming and accommodating to my schedule. I would definitely volunteer at this event again!

During The Swap Til You Drop event, I got to organize clothes and talk to a bunch of really cool people who love thrifting as much as I do! The UP traditions chair, Kylee, was super nice and helped accommodate my volunteering hours to my schedule. I got to meet a lot of students who love thrifting as much as I do! I learned a lot about where these donations would go and who they would help after the week long event was over.

I had a wonderful time volunteering with UP Traditions Chair Kylee!

The Swap Til You Drop event was a great opportunity for me to volunteer at because I got to meet a bunch of people who like to thrift as much as I do! I would definitely volunteer there again because of the environment that the Traditions chair for UP created during the volunteer hours. I enjoyed talking with other volunteers and students at the university.