Giving Back
WooServe students roll up their sleeves to help out wherever they are needed in the community.
Photos by Nancy Sheehan
Over the last year, members of the student club WooServe cheered on runners raising money for multiple sclerosis research, delivered sandwiches to a women’s shelter, and played bingo with residents in an assisted living facility—and that’s just the start. The club organized 20 service projects throughout the 2023-24 academic year.
WooServe’s mission is simple: to give back to the community. The club’s e-board, which for 2023-24 included Lizbeth Alcantara Ruiz ’24, president; Alexander Lucier ’24, vice president; Zoe Callahan, secretary; and Sophia Magdaleno ’27, next year’s social media manager, planned a variety of events to appeal to a breadth of students.
“At the beginning of the year we spend a lot of time figuring out what the kids this year are passionate about,” says Alcantara Ruiz. “And then we do everything we can to make sure that we offer those events for them.”
“Everybody has different backgrounds and different interests,” Callahan says. “Everybody’s in different clubs and people do sports, and everybody has different majors. So we have different connections.”
During the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, when classes were online, the club’s leadership graduated without having the opportunity to recruit people to take over. In 2021, Alcantara Ruiz and Nicole Penny ’23 worked together to bring the charter back and recruit more members. Alcantara Ruiz is making sure that what happened during the pandemic doesn’t happen again by preparing other students to serve on the e-board.
The organization has been helped by Philip Feinzeig, a retired lawyer who takes classes at Worcester State. When WooServe assembled personal care bags for a shelter, Feinzeig went all over the city and got several different companies to donate. “He comes to everything he possibly can, and he just loves to see everything that we do,” says Lucier.
It’s an example of what Alcantara Ruiz loves most about WooServe. “It’s the community WooServe brings us,” she says. “We got so many new connections this year just by going out there and helping the people out whenever and wherever they needed us.”
“I love to help others because if I were in that situation, I would want to be helped, too,” Magdaleno says. “The most rewarding part for me is giving back to the community because there’s so many groups and organizations out there that we still don’t know of or haven’t helped.”
Callahan says she loves knowing that she made an impact in at least one person’s life. “Even little things can change the whole aspect of someone’s day,” she says.
Lucier appreciates getting to work with others who are as passionate as he is. “We’re a special group on campus because everybody’s making an effort to be there,” he says.
