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Volunteer Breakfast
I arrive at ’55′ at about twenty to nine, twenty minutes before the time when the free breakfast for volunteers is supposed to begin. I find about 10 people abuzz in the pleasant, renovated room of the community center – some are preparing scrambled eggs, coffee, tea, etc. for the volunteers that will start pouring in in a few minutes, and others are having breakfast, before the volunteers arrive, as they will have to be serving others later and won’t have much time to eat. These 10 people are volunteers themselves.

“We thought we might as well eat now, while there’s still no one,” Geert-Jan explains to me. Geert-Jan is doing an internship with Serve the City Leuven. He is from the Netherlands and studies theology at the ETF, a seminary in Leuven. He’s been at ’55′ every day this week, welcoming the many volunteers that participate in Serve the City’s and I-Care’s numerous projects, giving out and collecting the green volunteer t-shirts.

“It is really pleasant to see people come back with a smile,” he says, referring to volunteers that come back to ’55′ to drop off their t-shirts after they’ve completed their projects. He’s not getting paid by Serve the City for what he’s doing. When I ask him why he chose to do this internship with Serve the City, he says he likes that Serve the City helps people to help people: “People appreciate it.”

Among the volunteers in the community center I also encounter Kristien, a Flemish girl who studied theology and now works at the University Parish (UP) (when she’s not busy with preparing breakfast for volunteers at 55). She tells me that she started work at the UP because she did not like the way the community houses were run, and she thought she could do something to change that – instead of just criticizing. At some point her boss at the UP told her that they should do something for the Week of the Volunteer. Serve the City was already doing a lot of things with volunteers in Leuven at that time, so the UP decided to partner with them. This led to the present cooperation: the I-Care campaign. (Did I understand this correctly?)

Anke is another one of the volunteers preparing breakfast. I ask her why she decided to volunteer.
“Serve the City is totally awesome! Why not?” is her reply.

Elien, who works as a nurse with old people, volunteered in a project at Fabota helping underprivileged children with their homework earlier this week. She find this to be a good initiative. She is here today to help with preparing and serving breakfast.

Liesbeth and Nele are also on the breakfast crew. They live at Leo XIII, where the Serve the City office is, and they say that everybody who was at Leo XIII last year learned about Serve the City. This year everybody at Leo XIII is doing some volunteer work, they tell me. “I volunteer regularly, and I like going and doing things for others,” Nele says.

Not every week
Since about nine o’clock, volunteers involved in other Serve the City projects have been trickling into the center and slowly filling the tables in the big room. I go to talk to some of them.

Audrey studies bioengineering and volunteered earlier this week (she did 2 hours of promotion for LOKO, the KULeuven student organization). She says that for her it’s important to discover what is out there beside studying and parties. “It’s nice to help people,” she adds. Her friend Belinda from the Netherlands also studies bioengineering in Leuven. She volunteered to wash wheelchairs a few days ago. She feels it’s nice to help people and takes part in other volunteer organizations. “What’s nice about Serve the City is that you do it once, and you don’t have to do it every week”, she says. Audrey adds: “We do not have that much time. Otherwise we could do something every week.” Hanna from Poland, whom I meet later, also thinks that the possibility to serve a bit at a time is something great about Serve the City. She says there’s nothing like this in Poland. “I know many people who want to help, but don’t want to devote their whole lives to it. I think it’s really nice for international students. After two months of partying, you want to do something constructive,” she adds. Ellen (from Antwerp) and Gaelle (from Wallonia), biology students at the KUL, volunteered to work at the university greenhouse this week. The project was supposed to take 6 hours, but they called some friends, and they finished almost all the work in one-two hours. As Audrey and Hanna, they also tell me that they like voluntary work, but cannot engage every week, because they have other things to do.

Vanya, who’s having breakfast at the same table, studies biomedical science. She cleaned a kitchen at the faculty of social sciences earlier in the week. Why? “Because it’s fun. I have some free time, and I want to do something useful.”

STC Beginnings
In the meantime, Anton has come in, so I go and chat with him. Anton is one of the people involved part-time and year round in planning and organizing Serve the City Leuven, a key figure in the organization. I ask him what I ask many of the volunteers I talk to this morning: “How did you hear about Serve the City?” The answer to this question wins me some insight into Serve the City’s history in this town. Anton first laughs, then jokes, and then tells me about Horace (another key figure for Serve the City Leuven). In May/June 2008 Horace wanted to do Serve the City once in Leuven. He’d recently come back from the US. “I never thought it would work. I thought, this is Belgium, not the US, and that not enough people would show up. I did not tell Horace, in order not to discourage him, but I thought ‘You do your own mistakes’,” Anton tells me. So he was not involved in the organization of the first Serve the City in Leuven. “But I was wrong,” he continues. 50 people showed up, and people thought, we should do this again! This week about 81 volunteers took part in the Serve the City projects alone (not counting the UP projects).

Before I leave 55 to go to the Roerhuis to check out how the volunteers are doing there, I sit down to have breakfast myself. On the table next to me is a group of five students from the Check Republic, Italy, and Slovakia, which are having breakfast before heading to their project.

The Roerhuis
My next stop is on the Brusselsestraat, about five minutes’ worth of cycling from 55: the Roerhuis. Patricia, a lady who’s been working at the Roerhuis since it’s establishment 20 years ago,tells me that it is a place where about 40 handicapped people receive help. 30 of these live there, and 10 come for daily activities. Daniel (MA in water resources at the KUL, from Bolivia) and Jochem (another theology student, from the Netherlands), the Serve the City volunteers, are painting the recreation room of the Roerhuis and talking about Jesus. Daniel has served on about 5 other projects this week. Why? “I like Leuven very much. I felt bad to see so many empty spots (on the sign-up sheets). Some projects were even cancelled because there were no volunteers,” he explains. “I think that volunteering should be made mandatory,” he adds, “Of course it would no longer be volunteering…” Jochem has many reasons to serve. Among other things, he says it’s nice serving because one gets to meet new people. Some of his friends are also taking part in Serve the City, but he opted for a project with someone he did not know. “Many of the people who take part are quite open and goodhearted and have the ability to look beyond their own needs,” he says. “What I like about this project is that they treat us like kings. We are here to serve them, but sometimes…” And as if to confirm his words, a girl from the Roerhuis comes to invite him and Daniel to lunch. Soep & broodjes. Sounds good, and seems like a good time for me to leave them and head towards more mundane tasks after this invigorating and rare (at least for me) dive in the world of Serve the City.

Petar

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