Students breathe new life into volunteering society

One group of committed UW students are working to aid society’s underrepresented groups by starting a new chapter of the New Life Volunteering Society (NLVS).

“New Life is a developing national and secular nonprofit organization focusing on helping members of our community most in need,” said junior Julia Kabacka, one of the founders of the UW chapter. “Our goal is to create a group of dedicated UW students willing to make a difference one step at a time through participating in various community service events.”

On March 1, NLVS helped the United Way of King County distribute food to those in need.

“NLVS focuses on four underrepresented groups in society including the homeless, [the] hungry, [the] mentally and physically disabled, and children from disadvantaged backgrounds,” said senior Chase Dean, co-president of the chapter. “We are trying to volunteer with those populations as much as possible and recently started the chapter at UW to make it as big as we can and get as many students involved as possible.”

According to its Web site, the mission statement for NLVS is to serve those in need through community service, education and health care,with an ultimate goal of achieving peace, love and happiness among local, regional, national and global communities.

The national NLVS was founded in 1999 by Dr. Vijay Khiani at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His friend, colleague and UW alumna Sarita Mahtani, brought NLVS to the UW.

“The long term goal for the future is to make a self-sustaining free health care clinic in the area, kind of like the one they created in Chicago,” Dean said.

Kabacka is looking forward to planning more community events.

“We are very enthusiastic about planning more service events next quarter, which will involve working with children of various ages, distributing food to the homeless, and volunteering at shelters and other facilities,” she said.

NLVS’s next event will be a health care fair during spring quarter where UW medical student volunteers providing a sample of services a clinic would offer, such as free blood pressure and blood sugar tests.

Anyone is welcome to join the society; monthly meetings will start in April.

To form the new chapter on campus, the officers met several times to create a constitution, attend informational sessions and register.

“We have good leadership, and there are about eight to 12 officers to help start getting this thing off the ground,” Dean said.

[Reach reporter Lia Pittman at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]