As each fall semester gets underway, hundreds of Emory students, faculty and staff join together on the Atlanta campus with one common goal — to offer a day of volunteer service to the university community and nonprofit organizations throughout the metro area.
This popular tradition is Emory Impact Service Day. In partnership with Campus Life’s Center for Civic and Community Engagement (CCE), this student-led initiative offers opportunities to the entire Emory community to underscore the university’s mission of service to humanity by contributing a day of service.
On Saturday, Aug. 30, more than 700 students from the Atlanta and Oxford College campuses gathered with 30 faculty, staff and alumni in the Emory Student Center (ESC), looking forward to a day of volunteer service and shared community. The volunteers represented 45 recognized student organizations and several university departments.
After arriving at the ESC at 9 a.m., volunteers were divided into teams before departing — some by shuttle bus — to 36 service sites on Emory’s Atlanta and Oxford campuses and throughout the Atlanta area. By the end of the day, volunteers had contributed more than 1,900 hours of service.
Organizations that volunteers assisted during Impact Day 2025 included Clyde Shepherd Nature Preserve, a community-run urban green space committed to preserving natural spaces in the South Peachtree Creek watershed; Furkids, Georgia’s largest no-kill animal rescue and shelter, which has saved thousands of homeless animals; and Restoring One’s Hope of Atlanta, which assists the unhoused population and people experiencing food insecurity.
Other organizations and projects served by Impact Day volunteers are the Letter Writing Project, where volunteers wrote thoughtful, uplifting letters for hospitalized children, isolated elders, individuals experiencing hardship and others in need; Women's Resource Center to End Domestic Violence, which supports survivors of domestic violence and their children for the immediate and long-term; and A Few Cooks, an Emory student organization that fights food insecurity by preparing meals in the Few Hall test kitchen and distributing them to food pantries around Atlanta.
Students describe their Impact Service Day 2025 experience
A survey of Impact Day of Service student volunteers received a 68% response rate. Students overwhelmingly reported that they had a good experience, with 94% agreeing or strongly agreeing with the statement, “I made a positive impact in the community;” 95% responded that they are interested in participating in additional civic and community programs and/or events.
“It’s just overall a positive experience. The impact is also very meaningful to me. I like feeling that I’m involved in my community rather than being sheltered away,” says Iman A. Mohamed, a first-year Emory College student who plans to major in neuroscience and behavioral biology. “So, it makes me feel more bonded and enhances that feeling of connection. That’s something that I was especially looking forward to since this is my first year.”
“For the organization I’m in, the Brotherhood of Afrocentric Men, one of our key aspects is service. The goal is to give back because at the end of the day, we are all human, and we are all trying to live our lives as happily as we can,” says Zabriel Baptiste, a second-year computer science major. “Giving back to others doesn’t cost anything. In fact, it gives me joy.”
Impact Service Day 2025 is the first event of the new academic year hosted by Volunteer Emory, an initiative of CCE.
“When students volunteer together to serve others, they also build community with one another and forge close bonds, even lifelong friendships,” says Byron Jones, CCE’s director for student-led community engagement and the staff lead for the event.
“Impact Service Day introduces new students to Emory’s tradition of service and enables other members of our university community to recommit to that tradition,” Jones says. “Service is an especially important part of the Emory experience. It teaches students lifelong skills and sows seeds of community service that will blossom again and again throughout their journey through life.”