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After biking to campus the morning of August 20, 2022, Ricardo Pierre ’26 joined his fellow first-year students inside Rice Family Pavilion, everyone wearing matching royal-blue T-shirts. That year’s SPARC Day looked a little different. In a typical year, students would fan out across Central Florida, partnering with dozens of local nonprofits to serve the community firsthand. With on-site visits still restricted by pandemic precautions, the 900 SPARC Day participants on this August morning instead rallied together on campus around a single shared cause: eliminating hunger.

Pierre got right to work carefully packing each ingredient for red-lentil jambalaya assembly-line style into zippered pouches in partnership with U.S. Hunger. Before the first hour was up, an informal competition took shape—to see which Rollins College Conference (RCC) could pack the most boxes for donation to United Against Poverty. For Pierre, the son of a Haitian immigrant whose mother modeled determination and resilience, this opportunity to contribute to something bigger than himself became an impactful way to drive meaningful, transformative change.

“My SPARC experience put Rollins’ ethos of ‘Life is for Service’ into action,” says Pierre, a social entrepreneurship major who has participated in three subsequent annual days of service. His second year, he served as a volunteer. In 2024, Pierre played a key role behind the scenes as a student engagement intern tasked with coordinating all aspects of SPARC Day. This past fall, he facilitated a volunteer group doing invasive species removal at a local park.

While his roles have changed, Pierre’s stance on giving back remains constant: “Service is a mentality that’s cultivated over time and begins by taking a single step.”

The Scoop

Each year during orientation, new Tars are introduced to the power of service through SPARC Day—a tradition that stands for Service, Passion, Action, Rollins College. Facilitated by the Center for Leadership & Community Engagement (CLCE), the College’s annual day of service kicks off the academic year by modeling how engaging in the community beyond campus is a core element of the Rollins experience.

“Colleges don’t exist in isolation,” says Micki Meyer, Lord Family assistant vice president of student affairs for engagement and dean of Rollins Gateway. “They are part of a greater ecosystem and serve as anchors within communities that facilitate connection.”

SPARC Day is part of a movement aimed at cultivating active citizenship—one that allows students to see the Rollins mission in action by learning outside the classroom in a real-world context alongside community partners whose work spans everything from early childhood education and environmental stewardship to food security and housing.

“We have evolved over two decades by continually asking the community to identify their needs so we can walk and learn together in order to meet them,” says Meredith Hein, director of CLCE.

Hein’s reflection echoes the model that has made SPARC Day so enduring: service that begins with listening, shared purpose, and genuine partnership. But even with that intention, service in action can be unpredictable—not unlike the first-year experience itself. Projects may shift, weather may intervene, and tasks may unfold differently than expected, which is all part of the learning experience.

“Service requires teamwork, communication, trust, energy, adaptability, and excitement—all of which students experience alongside peers before ever stepping foot in a classroom,” says Sam Justice, assistant director of CLCE, pointing to how SPARC provides abundant learning opportunities while also helping others. “Everyone on campus has a SPARC Day story, a shared experience, which allows us to build a common language on campus around service and leadership.”

What I’m Learning

Yhuvier Vazquez ’27, a transfer student drawn to Rollins’ diverse service opportunities, spent SPARC Day 2025 at Idyllwilde Elementary School. His experience of helping a kindergarten teacher organize materials for the upcoming school year was a powerful introduction to what Rollins values as a community.

“SPARC made me realize that small acts of service can make a big difference,” says Vazquez, who has been seeking intentional ways to give back ever since. Starting his Rollins experience by connecting to a bigger purpose through teamwork set the tone for the kind of leader and person he wants to be: a future dentist with service at the center of his care.

“Helping others improve their health, and sometimes their confidence, feels like a natural extension of giving back,” says Vazquez, who values community outreach, especially in underserved areas where access to care is limited.

Pierre now serves as the most senior coordinator on the Immersion Planning Team, which facilitates service learning experiences that allow students to engage cultural, environmental, social, and political issues right at the source. It’s an organic evolution of his SPARC Day story—one that leverages his own leadership experience to help students like Vazquez become changemakers in their respective area of focus. His advice for getting started is simple.

“Be authentic and contribute in the ways that you can,” says Pierre, whose ultimate goal is to contribute to the greater human good. "Each of us brings skills, experiences, and intersecting identities to the table that can benefit others.”

After graduation, Pierre envisions working with mission-driven organizations to solve societal issues such as food insecurity and educational inequity. He has applied to the NobleReach Scholars Program as well as an internship at Second Harvest Food Bank and a full-time role at the United of Miami Way.

A Foundation for Leadership

For international relations major Lucas Hernandez ’13, opportunities to serve others at Rollins became the foundation of a life and career grounded in meaning and purpose.

“When knowledge is rooted in service, it becomes practical, relevant, and more easily applied across a wide variety of settings,” says Hernandez, skills training director for Microsoft Elevate, an initiative focused on ensuring that AI helps expand opportunity and solve real-world problems.

That mindset took shape during one of his earliest moments as a student. Volunteering at an Orange County elementary school on SPARC Day offered an immediate, shared experience rooted in community—tidying green spaces alongside the grounds crew, stocking the food pantry, and seeing firsthand what it means to contribute in a meaningful way. This day of service became a launchpad for multiple Immersions, where Hernandez discovered the changemaking potential of public policy and the power of grassroots community development—principles that continue to shape his life and career.

“Leadership is about moving people and organizations to better places,” he says, pointing to the need for empathy, humility, and a deep understanding of the context in which people live and work. “Service not only cultivates these qualities, but it also teaches us to listen first, act with intention, and earn trust through decisive, informed action—exactly the kind of leadership SPARC helped instill in me.”

For Sunny Toreihi ’20, one day of engagement at the Pace Center for Girls sparked a commitment to service focused on domestic violence and political advocacy through Rollins’ Bonner Leaders Program—a national philanthropic organization that empowers students to address today’s greatest challenges through community-based learning. She went on to serve in roles as an AmeriCorps Public Ally and interim operations director at People Power for Florida before pursuing law school at Florida International University.

“When we think of building the next generation of leadership, it starts from the ground up,” says Toreihi, now an assistant county attorney with Broward County.

As president of her law school’s Women’s Law Society, she identified a need for professional clothing among her peers and organized a donation drive to support students preparing for interviews and internships.

“It’s a great example of the various forms of advocacy that can take place within a strong community,” she says. “No accomplishment or act is ever done alone, which is why we owe it to ourselves to think about how we can help one another.”

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By the Numbers

Over the past two decades, SPARC Day has made a significant collective impact on the Rollins, Winter Park, and Orlando communities.

14,000+

Number of participants, including faculty, staff, students, alumni, and friends of the College

56,000+

Number of hours contributed

100+

Number of nonprofits served

$1,250,000

Dollar equivalent to service provided based on the volunteer value of an hour between 2006 and 2025

• SPARC Day |
• Center for Leadership & Community Engagement |
• Campus Life