McLaughlin students are involved in numerous volunteer and service-learning (service in exchange for an education) experiences throughout the year.

Waysmeet Volunteering

For the second year in a row, we raised and collected donations from local Durham residents for the neighboring UNH-affiliated Waysmeet Cornucopia Food Pantry via UNH Serves.  With 50+ students participating this last year, and at least 20 the year before, McLaughlin canvassed for donations and completed nearly dozens of tasks enabling our service partner to complete some much needed but less prioritized goals!  We have also hosted Wildcat Friends each semester, thereby befriending peers with a range of abilities and disabilities through fun hall programming.  Additionally, McLaughlin residents over the years have also donated their time helping with Pease Greeters, Project Linus, Relay for Life, and UNH campus clean-up.

Not only do students engage in these community engagement activities, but they are also asked to reflect on what they learned and apply these new lessons and observations to future perspectives and behaviors.  The service opportunities in McLaughlin are often well received, and highly enjoyed.  Though many of these service traditions are to be continued, we also look forward to increasing positive citizenship in different ways through new service opportunities, too.  To initiate this hope, we are committed to our service partnership with the UNH-affiliated Waysmeet Cornucopia Food Pantry to provide more depth in our service engagements benefitting both students and community partners.

Reoccurring Service-Learning Opportunities:

• Wildcat Friends (providing young adults with developmental disabilities the chance to experience college via a variety of activities, one via attending fun residence hall programming with UNH students)
• UNH Serves (campus-wide event honoring service on Veterans Day by engaging students in local community engagement meanwhile benefiting neighboring service sites in the Greater Seacoast community and Manchester.)
• Pease Greeters (welcoming troops home/back to the U.S.)
• Project Linus (making fleece blankets for critically-ill children in hospitals)
• Relay for Life (24-hour cancer awareness and fundraising event)
• McLaughlin Service Partner: Waysmeet Cornucopia Food Pantry