Service Groups Struggle to Define Roles

While Columbia Community Outreach may have united a wide variety of service-minded Columbians for a day, many service groups said that they struggle to gain recognition and funding on a day-to-day basis.

CCO chairs Joanne Rispoli, SEAS ’09, and Yitian Liu, CC ’09, said that for their own expanding program, which culminates in a day of community activism that involves nearly 1,000 Columbia participants, they have managed to find both campus and administrative support.

“I think that they fully appreciate what we do,” said CCO events co-chair Sayli Korgaonkar, CC ’09.

CCO has seen an increase in student involvement in recent years, and this year it boosted its number of participants from other Columbia schools, like the business school. In a massive logistical undertaking, the co-chairs said that while they would describe this as a “transition year”—Rispoli, Liu, and their faculty advisor were new to the leadership positions—campus interest in the CCO program was only increasing year after year.

But for other campus service groups, the question of where they should seek such support is not so properly defined.

The Columbia programming branch of Community Impact, the most visible umbrella service group on campus, oversees 25 service programs and almost 1,000 Columbia volunteers that work in the Harlem, Washington Heights, and Morningside Heights areas. In order to qualify for CI funding, then, programs must have a local focus.
But CI chair Allie Feldberg, CC ’08, said that the organization has struggled to gain widespread notice on campus outside of activist circles, despite the fact that a sizable number of Columbia students participate in CI programs.

“That’s something that CI has suffered from in the past,” Feldberg said, adding that the organization hopes to increase its campus presence.

Service groups that fall outside the scope of CI because they don’t have a local focus expressed frustration with trying to gain notice from even the established funding and advising mechanisms.

Starting last semester, the Student Governing Board began recognizing and providing funding for humanitarian and aid groups. For some groups without a specifically local angle, this has proven to be beneficial after they were previously shut out entirely from club funding in past years.

According to SGB chair Jonathan Siegel, the decision to begin recognizing humanitarian groups was aimed at providing a base for groups that otherwise would have been lost in the shuffle.

“There’s never been a home for them [miscillaneous humanitarian groups] before. Now that SGB had opened its doors to them, there’s a great deal of demand,” Siegel said. “There’s been a fantastic response, there’s a lot of great groups coming. They’re looking to grow.”

But Siegel also acknowledged that expanding SGB recognition puts a strain on an organization with a limited budget.

Ashley Bush, BC ’11 of FEED, a fledgling group that falls under the Hunger Umbrella organization, said that gaining SGB funding and recognition at the beginning of the fall semester was crucial in gaining both campus support and recognition. Without it, Bush said, the 20 member group working to ratify global hunger would have difficulty in both launching the organization and drawing student attention.

“That’s actually been key, to get recognition,” Bush said. With it, Bush said, other hunger advocacy groups and interested activists have been able to seek out the Hunger Umbrella when the group might have faded into obscurity otherwise.

As for CI, Feldberg said that making the distinction of where their programs fit in with the larger campus was one of their priorities. “There are so many different factors influencing how CI fits in with the structure of the University,” Feldberg said. “There’s lots of challenges.”

alix.pianin@columbiaspectator.com