#UTMGives drives generosity on campus
The University of Toronto Mississauga is joining the international Giving Tuesday movement by creating opportunities to support important causes throughout the month of November.
Taking place annually on the Tuesday after the two major post-Thanksgiving shopping days in the U.S. — Black Friday and Cyber Monday – Giving Tuesday aims to inject some generosity into the pervasive commerce of the holiday season. UTM is building up to this year’s Giving Tuesday on Nov. 27 by taking part in a broad initiative designed to help students give back to their communities and address local and global challenges.
Called #UTMGives, the initiative involves UTM’s Centre for Student Engagement leading or supporting various campus events and activities in collaboration with campus groups and departments, as well as MississaugaGives, a city-led effort to encourage charitable giving in partnership with local businesses, schools, charities, other organizations and the public. So far, #UTMGives has 14 campus partners, including the Office of Advancement, Campus Police and the Health & Counselling Centre (see the full list online).
“We thought it would make sense to centralize our efforts and have one big, campus-wide approach so that we can create more opportunities for the UTM community to give back,” says Mariana Villada Rivera, communications assistant in the Centre for Student Engagement.
#UTMGives is engaging the campus community to give in two main ways. The first is through giving events or programs that will be taking place across campus. For example, the Centre for Student Engagement has partnered with the Athletics and Student Recruitment & Admissions departments to hold Peel Youth Day. Taking place this Saturday, it will welcome local high school students to the campus to help them explore post-secondary education as well as employment opportunities for their age group.
Next week, the Undergraduate Commerce Society is hosting an event each weekday to promote community giving, such as a school supply drive, a toy drive, and information sharing on local volunteer opportunities. Also happening next week is International Education Week, in which the International Education Centre will run a language conversation circle as a way for domestic and international students to connect with and learn from each other.
The other approach involves setting up giving stations at events held by different campus groups that support specific causes. For example, Athletics will collect non-perishable food donations at its Varsity women’s and men’s basketball games on Nov. 21. The donations will be directed to the UTM Food Centre, which provides free food to students in need. A complete calendar of events will soon be posted on the #UTMGives webpage.
UTM community members are also being encouraged to participate in a kindness challenge by competing with friends to complete 10 random acts of kindness. The Centre for Student Engagement has created a checklist of acts such as holding open a door for someone, writing someone a motivational note and practising self-care. After completing the checklist — it works on the honour system — they can enter a draw to win a $50 Chartwells gift card to use at all campus food outlets.
The main objective of the campaign, Villada Rivera says, is to encourage UTM community members to give in the following five ways: time, resources — e.g. donating gently used items — funds, attention and voice — the last two to the university, community and global issues.
“It’s important to remember that the holidays are a season of giving,” Villada Rivera says. “This approach makes it easy for everyone to come together and support different causes.”