The Early Childhood Studies Club is one of the many clubs on campus that allows students to partake in helping their community as well as aiding in children’s growth.
The club is one of the few service – oriented clubs on the California Baptist University campus. Its members hold many different fundraisers and events to help the Riverside community as well as the children of the Inland Empire.
“The Early Childhood Studies Club does a lot of local and service projects for families, schools and children,” said Alysha Burks, senior early childhood studies major. “We did a food drive, we are going to do a book drive, we helped with Operation Christmas Child, and next year we are hoping to help our students get CPR certified.”
The club held a canned food drive on campus in an effort to aid in child starvation. They spent weeks collecting different canned food to deliver them to Ramona High School in Riverside.
“We collected the cans for more than a month so we could fill up a pantry,” said Dr. Kathryn Short, director of the early childhood studies program. “We are really excited because this is our first ever endeavor to partner with them, so we are hoping we can continue on in the spring with more food and clothing.”
Many of the children receiving these cans may be eating them in a car or might not have the proper utensils to open the cans so the club chose to only collect cans with pop tops or easily open lids.
“The reason we choose to do the pop-top cans is because not a lot of children can use a can opener or families don’t have a can opener so we tried to get them so they can easily open the cans and stick a fork in so they can easily eat it,” said Maddie Alexander, senior early childhood studies major.
Persons interested in getting involved, the next service event will be Feb. 10 at Homecoming weekend. The club’s booth will be making and passing out activity bags for all the children that attend.
