Saturday morning, a group of Georgia College & State University students ascended Ga. Highway 212 to sow the seeds of shade at the Baldwin County Recreation Department Soccer Complex.

To kick off a week of community involvement through volunteer service, Hands on Milledgeville invited members of GCSU’s six Resident Learning Communities to a morning of beautification at the county’s multipurpose athletic complex. About 50 GCSU freshman and sophomores wielded pickaxes, rakes, shovels and post hole diggers to pick up rocks, lay pine straw and plant rows of red oak and maple trees to shade the field for the county’s next batch of soccer superstars and their parents.

County Recreation Department Director Bill McNair said the 30 or so shade trees will be a tangible reminder of all the volunteer work GCSU and other college students have provided his department with through the years.

“It’ll be good for these students to come back 10 or 20 years from now and say ‘I helped plant that tree,’” he said.

McNair said the whole community gains from the service college students provide by refereeing and scoring youth league sports and helping out in other ways.

“Some students come as freshman and end up giving us four years of good quality help,” he said.

Although many of the students providing several hours of work Saturday may not make it back out to referee in a youth league sport, the partnership between GCSU’s Resident Learning Communities and Hands on Milledgeville will ensure the time these students spend bettering themselves at Georgia College will make the community better as well.

Throughout the week, Hands on Milledgeville, a local volunteer resource center created by a $10,000 Challenge Grant from Hands On Georgia, will be challenging GCSU students and Milledgeville/ Baldwin County residents to improve their community through a variety of volunteer opportunities celebrating Hands On Georgia Week. By participating in Saturday’s kickoff, the GCSU volunteers joined other civic-minded individuals in a National Day of Action through the Hands On Network, a national volunteer resource center sponsored by President George H.W. Bush’s Points of Light Institute.

GCSU GIVE Center Director Kendall Stiles worked with GCSU Coordinator of Civic Engagement Projects Gregg Kaufman to engage Resident Learning Communities’ students in the National Day of Action. But it wasn’t a hard sell for the students, as they are already involved in the Residential Learning Communities program, which aims to enhance the student experience by engaging freshmen and sophomores in community-building between students, faculty and the broader Milledgeville/Baldwin County community.

“We want students, faculty and the community to be a part of this community; we want them to yield ‘x’ number of hours to ‘x’ number of projects aimed at making a difference in community life,” Kaufman said. “This is the first time all the residential learning communities have come together to share in a common project in the community.”

GCSU currently has six residential learning communities including the Honors/Scholars, Entrepreneurship, Fine Arts, Casa Mundo (for International Students), Wellness and Leadership communities. Kaufman said between 120 and 140 GCSU freshman and sophomores are involved in the residential learning communities.

“Roughly 10 to 12 percent of incoming freshman are affiliated with one of the six communities,” Kaufman said.

Kaufman said the goal is to have all six learning communities come together at least once a semester to facilitate a community service project. The next community-wide service day is scheduled to be the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service in January.

In addition to the community-wide service days, the learning communities provide service to Hands on Milledgeville, the Baldwin County Recreation Department and the Youth Enrichment Services partnership between GCSU, Baldwin County Schools and the Baldwin County Recreation Department.

Luis Barajas, a GCSU freshman from Dalton, said that he joined the Wellness Resident Learning Community as a way to get out and interact with other people. The Wellness Community challenges him and other students to focus on living a healthy lifestyle by promoting the physical, emotional, social, intellectual and spiritual dimensions of wellness.

But Saturday, Barajas and his peers paused from pursuing their own wellness to promote the communal wellness of others.

“It’s good to get to know your community and give back,” he said.