Team Buzz takes service to extremes for 10th anniversary

TEAM (Tech Enhancing Atlanta Metropolitan) Buzz will celebrate its tenth year of service Oct. 21 in the Atlanta community.

Each year, TEAM Buzz joins students, faculty and alumni in hopes of bringing together the campus and the Atlanta community through philanthropy while raising awareness of numerous service opportunities offered year-round.

This year's theme for TEAM Buzz is "eXtreme service" (the capital X doubles as the roman numeral which references its tenth anniversary). Its organizers are hoping for participation from over 2,000 volunteers.

A publicity campaign will kick off group registration, which begins Sept. 24. Individuals can register for the event beginning Oct. 1. The event is open to everyone in the Tech community.

"Although we have primarily Tech students [volunteer], we've actually had many participants from Georgia State, Emory and Kennesaw," said David Ward, director of public relations for TEAM Buzz and a fourth-year Computer Engineering major.

"We have a lot of Greek participants [and] many [students] from sports clubs...we're trying to encourage other groups [such as] major-related societies. We have a lot of [Peer Leaders] and [Community Advisors] that encourage students to get involved," Ward said.

The day of service, usually a Saturday, begins with a free breakfast of orange juice and doughnuts and ends with a celebratory pizza party later that afternoon. Volunteers are also provided with free T-shirts.

This year, participants will have over 35 service project options to choose from. Among other things, they can work to revitalize nearby parks, staff soup kitchens, run carnivals for kids in underprivileged areas, or partake in projects such as Habitat for Humanity.

Some service projects are offered every year. For instance, TEAM Buzz has been planting trees with Trees Atlanta and helping to revitalize Reynoldstown, a historic Atlanta neighborhood, since its inauguration in 1997.

Though many of the projects are recurrent, no two years are exactly the same. "Last year we had some projects that were spawned off of Hurricane Katrina [because] we had specific needs within the community," Ward said.

The fruits of these projects are not only apparent around Atlanta, but on Tech campus as well. TEAM Buzz helped clean up and paint the I-75/85 tunnel on East campus and helped Tech's Facilities department plant trees in between the fields behind the CRC and West campus.

Over the years, a side project of TEAM Buzz has been to increase the level of alumni participation. It is this effort that has allowed TEAM Buzz Day to evolve from a local service project to a national event. On this day of service, alumni groups from all over the country (New Hampshire to Florida to Texas to California)-over thirty groups in all-go out into their own communities to do service projects.

TEAM Buzz not only serves the Atlanta community through its major day of service, but it also functions as a means for its participants, primarily students, to gain an awareness of all the service organizations around Atlanta that could use the vigor and energy that college students can bring.

"The initial idea came about at the time when we needed an initiative that could bring Tech closer to the surrounding community," said Tony Chan, an Industrial Engineering alumnus who helped found the event and now serves on its advisory board.

"[Its] focus is not just on one day, but rather on providing an environment that allows students to integrate community service as part of their student life, whether that's inside or outside the classroom. [Students] learn to share not only their time but their skills and their resources as well," Chan said.

In 1997, when the idea for a day of service surfaced on Tech campus, teachers thought it was an admirable concept but doubted that even 200 students would show up for the event, pointing to the fact that Tech is an engineering school and its students might not have enough time or enthusiasm to volunteer.

Nevertheless, on the first TEAM Buzz Day "we hit the mark," Chan said. "We...opened 1,200 slots and had to close registration because we were overbooked."

Since then, TEAM Buzz Day has grown into a significant as well as award-winning campus event. Just last year, it was named Burdell's Best Activity. It has become Tech's largest day of community service, attracting high numbers of volunteers every year. Recently promised an endowment of $150,000 from Tech's class of 1981, TEAM Buzz seems primed for further expansion and growth.

For more information on how to get involved, check out www.teambuzz.org.