At the Human Sciences Cottage, students, staff and family from the United Future Leaders gathered Saturday morning to celebrate Make a Difference Day through hands-on projects meant to serve Lubbock children and families.<\/p>\n
\u201cMake a Difference Day is a national day of service,\u201d said Cece Nunez, UFL associate director. \u201cThe purpose is to get people of all ages contributing to the community through volunteerism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hosted through the Texas Tech\u2019s Center for Adolescent Resiliency, UFL focuses on developing youth leadership in students from fifth grade through college.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like to say that my job is to build healthier communities for adolescents,\u201d Nunez said.<\/p>\n
For this year’s event, students created hand-painted doormats for Family Promise, a local organization that supports families to transition out of homelessness.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a way for us to help families who are finding their forever homes and getting another chance,\u201d said Hannah Hilliard, a senior counseling and addiction recovery sciences major and UFL student assistant.<\/p>\n
Hilliard said volunteering provides perspectives beyond the classroom.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Volunteering) really helps ground me,” Hilliard said. \u201cDoing a whole bunch of schoolwork, this helps me stay connected to my community and feel like I have more purpose than just school and the monotony of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Hannah Hilliard a senior coupling and addiction recovery sciences major paints a rug during make a difference day at the Human Sciences Cottage Oct. 25, 2025.<\/p>\n
Jadon Chesnutt<\/p>\n
Other volunteers worked in decorating bags filled with menstrual products and encouraging\u00a0notes to distribute to Lubbock middle schooler students.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re just writing positive little messages and including some products so that they can be prepared,\u201d said Lexi Gramlow, UFL intern and graduate assistant. \u201cNot everyone can afford the products they need or might have trouble accessing them, so we are just doing our part to help them along.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nunez said she hopes the project continues to grow.<\/p>\n
\u201cEach year, we want it to get a little bit bigger,\u201d Nunez said. \u201cBut more than anything, it\u2019s about camaraderie and making a difference together.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the Human Sciences Cottage, students, staff and family from the United Future Leaders gathered Saturday morning to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21050,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[168,170,169,223],"class_list":["post-21049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lubbock","tag-lubbock","tag-lubbock-headlines","tag-lubbock-news","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}