Tech to Town hosts their first in person event since 2019

By Melanie Escalante

Ashlynn Neumayer (left), Nicole Wingard (center) and Eberechukwu Nwachukwu (right) volunteering at the South Plains Food Bank for Tech to Town, in 2021.

Tech to Town is a large day of service where the Texas Tech community has the opportunity to go into the Lubbock community and give back by volunteering with various agencies and groups around Lubbock county.

Loni Crosby, administrator for student union activities, said students, faculty and staff participating in the event on Saturday will check in at Urbanovsky Park from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. At 10 a.m. the Citibus will take them to their designated volunteer locations. Once the volunteering hours are over at 12 p.m., the volunteers will head back to Urbanovsky where food, music, and giveaways will be provided. 

“We have a bunch of sponsored giveaways to give out,” Crosby said. “A lot of local businesses sponsor this event so they donated a lot of cool prizes for students to win, all of the volunteers to win just to say thank you for going out and giving back to the community.”

Crosby said the event on Saturday will be the first large-scale Tech to Town since 2018. In 2019 the event happened on a smaller scale due to rainy weather, in 2020 the event didn’t take place due to COVID-19 restrictions and in 2021 the event happened virtually with some hybrid volunteering. 

“I think a lot of students are ready to get back to that in person event feel and a lot of agencies are getting to where they’re just now able to take on more volunteers and are able to open their doors to more help, so this event is really getting to help kick off everybody being able to go back to these agencies and give time to them and help them out,” Crosby said.

Crosby said the event started as a way of saying thank you to the Lubbock community for their support and partnership with Tech. 

“We want it to grow as an event. We really want to make it bigger and bigger and be more of a traditional event,” Crosby said. “The student activities board has a lot of the traditional events on campus that we contribute to and we want to make this a bigger traditional event that happens at the end of spring.”

The administrator from Lubbock, Texas said Tech students gain leadership skills, communication skills, experience, are able to celebrate diversity and strengthen personal responsibility as a result of participating in volunteer opportunities like Tech to Town. The event has also received good feedback from the agencies involved. 

“They really do appreciate when Texas Tech students and faculty and staff come out to volunteer with them. They’re always needing support and they’re always needing helping hands and they really do appreciate us coming out there and just dedicating our time to help them out,” Crosby said. “They can get a lot done within two hours on a Saturday, they can get a bunch of stuff done for the week and it really just helps push their mission and give more support.”

Volunteers at the South Plains Food Bank make food bags for those in need.

Jordan Canal, Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts programs coordinator, said they often partner with Tech organizations, groups and performers, especially on the First Friday Art Trails. 

“We are a great space for a lot of art students and different performers to come through and kind of get experience so it’s always really meaningful that they give back to us by coming, and help clean up our campus,” Canal said. 

Canal said the volunteers on Saturday will help LHUCA prepare for their annual fundraising gala that helps fund their entire year. 

“For the volunteers they’re going to be outside and around our campus kind of helping us spruce it up,” Canal said. “As you know we’ve had some crazy winds lately so things blow in, things blow down, things get dirty so we need to just spruce it up because our fundraiser is our gala and it is a very very formal event and it does take place either in our galleries or with weather permitting, hopefully it’ll take place in our outdoor plaza.”

Canal said volunteering is a great way to fill holes in your resume since college students don’t necessarily walk out of college with a ton of professional experience.

“In my youth I moved away from home to go to college and I was the president of like a youth service organization and I will say one of the best ways to get involved and learn a community when you’re not from the community is to volunteer,” Canal said. “I’m not from Lubbock and even as an adult I will occasionally go volunteer with an organization because it’s the best way to get to know an organization and the best way to get to know some locals and the people.” 

Eberechukwu Nwachukwu, junior accounting major from Nigeria, said she participated in Tech to Town in 2019, 2021 and plans on volunteering again this Saturday. Last year she and fellow Student Government Association members volunteered at the South Plains Food Bank.

“When I first did meals on wheels I was unsure because I was just like dropping off food at these random people’s houses, but when you really start doing it and you really see like when you drop food off for one person and they’re so excited they’re so thankful, there is joy in that,” Nwachukwu said. “There’s also just the peace of knowing at the end of the day it seems so small but you’re able to help someone in that moment.”

Nwachukwu said last year her and the other volunteers at the South Plains Food Bank coordinated to show that they were being as efficient as possible with the time they had.

“When we first got there we all introduced ourselves, said our majors and then we added a bunch of tables together and pulled in different items and so you could choose which spot you wanted to be and we’d just go like a circle just rotating, filling up the bags, dropping it off until everything was done,” Nwachukwu said. 

Nwachukwu said participating in Tech to Town gives you a new perspective on different aspects of Lubbock since being on campus can make you feel sheltered from the rest of the community. 

“I’m an international student from Nigeria and so when I came to Tech I didn’t know anybody or wasn’t sure of anything but it was a lot of the local Lubbock community that really helped me get established at Texas Tech so that’s just my way of giving back to the community that welcomed me over the past few years,” Nwachukwu said. 

Nwachukwu said she plans on participating in Tech to Town in 2023 as well.

“Tech to Town is an amazing opportunity to really see and give back to the Lubbock community because we tend to forget but there’s no Texas Tech without our Lubbock community and no Lubbock community without Texas tech,” Nwachukwu said. “So we each play a big role in each other’s lives and so having the opportunity to really see another aspect that you’re not used to is really important.”