By Alejandro Serrano, news staff
Hundreds of students from around the world, including dozens of Northeastern students, volunteered in locations around Boston Sunday to wrap up the three-day Clinton Global Initiative University’s 10th annual meeting.
“It’s all about unifying the space,” said Alyssa L. Trometter, the senior service partnerships manager for Clinton Global Institute University (CGI U). “Really spend(ing) time connecting with the community.”
At the Inner City Sanctuary for the Arts in Roxbury, Chelsea Clinton joined an assembly line of volunteers clad in blue shirts to write inspirational messages — such as “Your flaws are perfect” — on paper and packed them in bags with vegetables, fruits and pamphlets with health information. The packages will be distributed to veterans on Veterans Day, Trometter said.
“Through sharing our trials, triumphs and everything, CGI U becomes a family for a weekend and beyond,” said Hetal Kharecha, who was helping pack the meals into bags.
Kharecha said she joined the institution as a Harvard University student in 2008 with a CGI U commitment project to vaccinate children in rural parts of India. After successfully vaccinating thousands of children, she said she changed her commitment and started a new one focused on human trafficking after she met a victim in 2013.
She said she is now a commitment mentor for the initiative and helps a score of students around the world advocate for trafficking victims.
“They are creating amazing, amazing projects,” she said. “Amazing organizations. Amazing initiatives to create educational awareness and to directly help the trafficking population.”
In another room of the Roxbury building, more than a dozen volunteers sat on the floor, sifting through books and sorting them into boxes. In a lot across the street, a group of volunteers painted little wooden libraries, which looked like like enlarged birdhouses, in vibrant blue, yellow and green.
Students also helped hang up murals, that were spray painted on materials like a tarp and cloth, on the outside of the building.
“I just can’t believe this. I’m blown away,” said Ryan Ubuntu Olson, of Washington, D.C., about one of the murals that a viewer could scan on an mobile phone application to watch a story about the history of humanity.
Olson said he has been involved with CGI U since 2010 and has volunteered as a LGBTI mentor for six years.
“Northeastern students are great,” he said. “This is a tangible impact that we are having, a physical building, but think about the intangible impact we are all having around the world.”
Sule Sahin, vice president of Northeastern’s chapter of buildOn, an international nonprofit that builds schools in developing countries, said she and her buildOn peers are committed to fostering civic engagement and community pride at a Dorchester high school.
Sahin said the weekend was a moving experience.
“I really liked it,” said the third-year bioengineering major. “I’ve met a lot of inspirational people.”
Elsewhere in the city, students installed a mural at Orchard Gardens while others painted in the South End, according to posts on Northeastern’s Snapchat.
The day of service kicked off Sunday morning with opening remarks from former U.S. President Bill Clinton, his daughter Chelsea, Mayor Martin J. Walsh and Northeastern President Joseph E. Aoun at Madison Park High School.
Bill Clinton commended participants, encouraged them to continue serving and told them not to focus on the discrete differences between people.
“Look at you. This is the world we need — where we are celebrating your diversity,” he said. “Not a single person here has been asked to give up anything. Not your racial identity. Not your religious identity.”
For Olson, the eight-year CGI U veteran from Washington, D.C., the annual meeting provides an opportunity to meet new people, learn about their passions and try to help fulfill them.
“This is like a spiritual retreat for me,” he said. “Just in being in the field of development, I am able to look at these commitments and be like, ‘Oh my god, you would fit here. You would fit here.’ Just trying to be that guy, because I needed that once in my life so I am trying to give that back.”
