Community Engagement
Turn Your Passion Into Action!
To close out this year's DEIS Impact festival, we are hosting a community engagement and volunteer fair! The organizations, clubs, and offices listed below will be tabling at Sherman Function Hall on March 12th from 5pm to 7:30pm. You can connect with community engagement opportunities through any of these groups. We hope that DEIS Impact has inspired you to take action in making positive community change.
Our 2025 Community Engagement Partners
Waltham Fields Community Farm cultivates sustainable and equitable relationships between people, their food supply, and the land from which it grows. We envision communities with equitable access to the beauty, sanctuary, and food of local, sustainable farms.
Our programs are rooted in research that highlights the critical need for STEM and mentorship opportunities for low-income and racially marginalized girls and gender-expansive youth. Science Club for Girls leads a movement in Greater Boston to address systemic barriers that prevent underrepresented girls and gender-expansive youth AND the STEM workforce from reaching its full potential.
Since 1904, Big Brothers Big Sisters has operated under the belief that inherent in every child is incredible potential. As the nation’s largest donor- and volunteer-supported mentoring network, Big Brothers Big Sisters makes meaningful, monitored matches between adult volunteers ("Bigs") and children ("Littles"), ages 5 through young adulthood in communities across the country. We develop positive relationships that have a direct and lasting effect on the lives of young people.
Our Mission
To inspire and enable all young people, especially those who need us most, to realize their full potential as productive, responsible and caring citizens.
Our Vision
To provide a world-class Club Experience that assures success is within reach of every young person who enters our doors, with all members on track to graduate from high school with a plan for the future, demonstrating good character and citizenship, and living a healthy lifestyle.
To inspire and enable all young people, especially those who need us most, to realize their full potential as productive, responsible and caring citizens.
Our Vision
To provide a world-class Club Experience that assures success is within reach of every young person who enters our doors, with all members on track to graduate from high school with a plan for the future, demonstrating good character and citizenship, and living a healthy lifestyle.
Hunger and Homelessness (H&H) offers volunteer programs that address homelessness and poverty in the Greater Boston Area. H&H is unique in that we offer volunteer commitments both large and small throughout the year – please review our programs below for more information.
As a Brandeisian, there is a lot that inspires, energizes and moves you. You’re unquestionably unique, passionate and ready to change the world. At Hiatt, we empower students and alumni to harness their individuality in exploring majors, industries and paths because choosing a “career” is more than finding one job or making one decision.
The Department of Student Engagement, in collaboration with the Waltham Group, offers opportunities for everyone to get involved. If you have never volunteered or are looking to reconnect, it is never too late to join our community of dedicated, passionate and supportive volunteers.
The Vic ’63 and Bobbi Samuels ’63 Center for Community Partnerships and Civic Transformation (COMPACT) at Brandeis University brings together scholars, activists, students, practitioners, and community partners to work collaboratively to create a more just, equitable, and sustainable world.
Through this collaborative approach, the center seeks to make ethical and respectful community engagement a central pillar of a Brandeis education, to establish engaged scholarship and pedagogy as signature strengths of the university, and to create transformative social change through collective action.
Through this collaborative approach, the center seeks to make ethical and respectful community engagement a central pillar of a Brandeis education, to establish engaged scholarship and pedagogy as signature strengths of the university, and to create transformative social change through collective action.
The VoteDeis Campus Coalition is made up of students, faculty and staff committed to supporting voter registration and participation among the Brandeis University community. VoteDeis is a nonpartisan, campuswide initiative.
Roses in Concrete is a leadership and mentorship program for Black, Latinx, Asian and Indigenous college and Waltham high School students and supporters. The program fosters educational, leadership, mentorship and professional development opportunities.
Junior Brandeis Achievers (JBA) provides free after school programming at Stanley Elementary School and Plympton Elementary School one day each week for five weeks in the fall and spring. Every semester, Brandeis volunteers lead a variety of clubs that engage Stanley and Plympton students in activities such as cooking, art and science.
American Red Cross blood drives are held on campus annaully typically around the months of October, February, and April with assistance from student volunteers. Blood collected at these drives saves an average of 1,000 lives annually. Donors and volunteers are needed for the drives. Volunteers help advertise; recruit student, faculty and staff donors for the drives; and assist during the drives to ensure that they run safely.
Prospect Hill Kids' Club partners with the community center at Prospect Hill Terrace, Waltham's largest low-income housing community, in order to provide the community's children with a safe place to come after school. Our coordinators and volunteers serve as role models and mentors to some of the children of Prospect Hill's 140 families.
For more than 150 years, Jewish Family & Children’s Service has been helping individuals and families build a strong foundation for resilience and well-being across the lifespan. Through an integrated portfolio of more than 40 programs reaching communities throughout Eastern and Central Massachusetts, JF&CS focuses on meeting the needs of new parents and their children, older adults and family caregivers, children and adults with disabilities, and people experiencing poverty, hunger, or domestic abuse.
Teaching Assistants in Public Schools (TAPS), is a community service organization that sends Brandeis volunteers to local Waltham Public Schools. Under the Brandeis Waltham Group umbrella, TAPS aims to enhance the educational experience and enrich the lives of both the Waltham and Brandeis communities. At these schools, volunteers are placed in classrooms to work in various capacities, based on teachers’ individual needs. Our volunteers mentor students, facilitate lessons and build deep relationships with students. We've sent volunteers in local schools for the past few years with great success and each year our program is met with increasing enthusiasm in the Brandeis and Waltham communities.
Household Goods provides a full range of donated furniture and household items, free of charge, to help people in need make a home.
We have an ongoing need for student volunteers (ages 14 and over) to assist with various projects in our center in Acton.
Students can volunteer on Saturdays, during school breaks and over the summer. Shifts are typically 8:45am-12n or 12:45pm-4pm.
Volunteering at Household Goods is a great way for students to work together as a group, develop and practice leadership skills, be a part of a team, earn community service hours and more.