The Big Event’s 40th Annual Service Project This Saturday

The Big Event at Texas A&M University will have its 40th annual community beautification service project this Saturday, March 26.

A total of 13,281 student volunteers are signed up to serve 1,935 residents throughout the Bryan-College Station community, completing a variety of jobs such as yardwork, painting and cleaning.

The Big Event is the largest, one-day, student-run service project in the nation. Each spring, thousands of Aggies work to enhance the local community to say “thank you” to the residents of Bryan and College Station for their year-round support of the university and its students.

The event will kick off Saturday morning at 8 a.m. with speakers at 9 a.m. including Texas A&M Head Football Coach Jimbo Fisher and the Yell Leaders. At 9:15 a.m., student volunteers will pick up their tools and fan out through the community to complete jobs requested in advance by residents.

The project was founded in 1982 by Texas A&M student Joe Nussbaum who asked some students to join him in cleaning cemeteries and one house. The idea took off and Aggie students have grown the project to tens of thousands of volunteers and jobs completed over the past four decades. The effort has spread to over 100 universities throughout the nation and in 2014 was even carried out overseas by study abroad students in Spain, Italy and Germany.

The Big Event is a recognized student organization and a member of the Texas A&M Student Government Association.