Union News

This spring’s One Day, One Dog will be the first for freshman Hunter Walle. And although he’s looking forward to the fun of the day’s “Give, Serve and Celebrate” lineup, he also hopes that the service component will take him and other students out of their comfort zones.

“As a college student, you need to get into situations where you’re a little uncomfortable,” says Walle, a sport management major from Indian Trail and a graduate of Metrolina Christian Academy. “It’s a good way to grow as a person while you’re also helping other people.”

Helping others has been a part of Walle’s life for as long as he can remember, thanks in a large part to his mom, Ginger Walle, director of Heart for Monroe. Established in 2014, when Hunter was in fourth grade, the nonprofit brings churches, organizations and individuals together to address homelessness, hunger and other community woes. Having Heart for Monroe as a constant source of volunteer opportunities created a habit of helping that Walle brought with him when he came to Wingate as a transfer student in January.

“Helping people makes me feel good at the end of the day, when I know I’ve made a difference,” Walle says. “And there’s the religious side of it too. My job as a Christian is to witness to the people I’m around, to show good character.”

Because Heart for Monroe often works alongside Wingate’s Collaborative for the Common Good, Walle was already familiar with the CCG and figured showing up there would be an easy way to get involved on campus. He wound up landing an internship with the primary duty of managing the University’s new food pantry.

Walle works six to 10 hours a week, taking inventory, stocking shelves, coordinating volunteer schedules and making sure things run smoothly at Paw Provisions. Designed primarily to help students who are facing food insecurity, the pantry debuted in Northeast residence hall in December and since then has been open for two-hour spans twice a week. In addition to food, it offers hygiene items and other essentials free of charge, and it has grown to include the Career Closet, where students can find business attire for interviews and professional events.

It has also expanded Walle’s perspective about people in need.

“A lot of times helping people in the past, it was people who were super-impoverished or homeless, but this is helping me see that even people my age still have needs and struggle, even if the need is small,” he says.

At the pantry, which is open on Tuesday afternoons (4-6 p.m.) and Thursday mornings (10 a.m.-noon), Walle helps fellow students find what they need. He says he tries to make their visit “a warm, supportive experience.”

“You scan a code and put in your ID. There is not a limit. You just come to the counter to show what you have so it can be logged for inventory purposes,” he says. “Sometimes people just grab a Gatorade and go, and sometimes you have people who need to get more. I like the fact that it applies to all kinds of people.”

Walle is responsible for taking in donations and buying food with University funds to fill the gaps. Connections that he’s made via Heart for Monroe have helped him stretch the pantry budget, and the nonprofit supplies a shipment of a variety of items every two weeks.

When Walle isn’t onsite at the pantry, he’s still marketing it, creating social media posts to help spread the word about what’s available and when students can drop by. He expects that the content-creation and social-media-management experience will help him in a future career, as will the interaction with Paw Provisions customers and suppliers, even if the networking isn’t always easy.

“I feel like sport management is such a people-intensive industry,” Walle says. “I’m not the most comfortable interacting with a lot of people, but I want to gain experience.” And he suggests that other students do the same, especially on One Day, One Dog.

“Take a leap of faith,” he says. “It might be uncomfortable at first, but it gets better.”

Original source can be found here.