UMass Boston

Community Engagement Initiatives

Volunteer Fairs

UMass Boston welcomes our community partners on campus to recruit volunteers twice a year during the Welcome Week events in September & January. This is an opportunity for our partners, students, faculty, and staff to gather and learn about ways they can engage in the community and collaborate on shared initiatives. To get on our invitation list email community.engagement@umb.edu

The Fall 2024 Volunteer Fair will take place September 11, 2024 from 11am-1pm on the Campus Center Terrace. Please register here: Fall 2024 Volunteer Fair - UMBeInvolved (campuslabs.com)

Days of Action

An annual tradition, the Fall and Spring Days of Action engage more than 100 students in service to the Boston community.  Join us to learn more about Boston, meet other UMass Boston students, and give back to our community. To learn more about volunteering, email community.engagement@umb.edu. 

If you are a nonprofit interested in hosting students for the Day of Action, please email us to discuss your needs.

The Fall 2024 Day of Action will take place September 14, 2024. Please register here: Fall 2024 Day of Action - UMBeInvolved (campuslabs.com)  

Organize a Service Day

Want to host a community service day for your student organization or department? These days are great for team building and contributing to your communities. Please email Community Engagement.

Breaking the Cycle of Violence World Cafe

Building a beloved community, building cultures of peace

BCVI is an interdisciplinary academic, practitioner, student, and youth focused initiative seeking an understanding of violence in the greater Boston area by working collaboratively to identify, plan and implement effective strategies to address the culture of violence. Breaking the Cycle of Violence is a multi-sector approach to understanding violence in our communities, supporting mutual efforts, facilitating new strategies, and understanding the culture of violence that envelopes the community, through individual and collective action and understanding.

Breaking the Cycle of Violence hosts multiagency multi-sector discussion meeting, creates and hosts ongoing roundtable discussions on the topic of violence, offers educational forums on the evolving understanding of the culture of violence, mentors graduate students in their scholarship, engages faculty across disciplines, and anticipates developing interdisciplinary courses on the culture of violence to be offered both internally as a part of the university curriculum and externally to the community.

Previous topics have included:

• Red flags in relationships
• Do all lives matter?
• What is the role of policy in society?

Please email Jacqueline.Lageson@umb.edu or DidUKnow@umb.edu for more information.