About Columbia Community Outreach
History

Columbia Community Outreach (CCO) is a student organized, student run undergraduate service day that promotes community service on campus. Founded in 1997 by Columbia College students Allan Ng (CC '99) and Charlie Leykum (CC '99), CCO is a community service initiative that seeks to bring together the Columbia University community and raise awareness for volunteerism. Two of the goals of the project are to raise awareness of opportunities for long-term service and to form mutually beneficial relationships with the Harlem and Morningside Heights communities. Every year over 1,000, students, faculty, staff and alumni volunteer for a day and go out into the city to work alongside community members and non-profit organizations. Traditionally we have had projects within the Morningside and Riverside Parks, including painting benches, trimming and weeding flowerbeds and bushes, and general clean-up. Other sites to which we send volunteers yearly include Covenant House, A Better Place, and Habitat for Humanity. Profits from fundraising are donated to Columbia Impact and the Double Discovery Center on the Columbia campus. Since CCO’s inception, thousands of Columbia volunteers helped out at over 90 site citywide and raised over $20,000 for Columbia's on-going service programs. Over the last 3 years, the Columbia Alumni Association (CAA) has joined with CCO to involve alumni in this day of service both at home and through alumni clubs across the nation and the world. Alumni in the New York area are encouraged to register and take part in a service project alongside their fellow Columbians, past and present. Many regional clubs connect alumni with each other and their local communities by organizing a service project on the same day as the CCO efforts around Columbia's campus.

The most obvious civic effect of CCO is the day of service given by 1,000 volunteers in NYC and hundreds of others across the world through alumni clubs. In addition, CCO encourages students, faculty, alumni, and administrators to pursue community service in the future by showing them the options available to them, and giving them a positive experience with community outreach. Finally, CCO is an activity that binds the Columbia campus together each year, as friends, student groups, academic departments, or fellow students unite to better the community.