Skip Navigation

News and Events

Press Releases

Pepperdine Community Serves Nationwide on Step Forward Day 

Pepperdine Step Forward Day student volunteers

Over 1,500 students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends gathered on the morning of Saturday, Sept. 8, to kick off Step Forward Day, Pepperdine University’s 19th annual day of collective volunteer service. 

Dozens of campus organizations—classes, dorms, fraternities, sororities, and clubs— assisted over 50 nonprofit organizations, schools, churches, and parks. Pepperdine athletic teams also came together to give a helping hand. The Waves men’s volleyball team conducted a clinic at Camp David Gonzales, a juvenile probation facility. The women’s and men’s basketball, baseball, and cheerleading teams designed a sports clinic for inner city kids at World Impact.

Actress Roma Downey from the television show Touched by an Angel spoke to the crowd of volunteers at Eddy D. Field Stadium before they embarked on the intensive day of service throughout greater Los Angeles and Ventura Counties. 

Alumni chapters across the country came together to help in their own communities. Waves in Washington, D.C., Phoenix, Seattle, the San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego, and Los Angeles “stepped forward” for the environment, helping to clean and preserve national landmarks, parks, bays, and waterways. Other chapters collaborated with nonprofit organizations empowering the disadvantaged in their communities. The Orange County Waves helped the Free Wheelchair Mission with a goal of providing 135 wheel chairs to disadvantaged and poor people.

Step Forward Day began in 1988 when two Pepperdine students recognized the need for volunteers in the local community and sought to encourage service among their peers. The projects began as small acts of service from helping to repair homes of local senior citizens to planting gardens at Webster Elementary School. Today the annual event has grown not only across Southern California, but also to communities nationwide as Pepperdine alumni step forward to help.

To learn more about Step Forward Day, please contact the Pepperdine Volunteer Center at (310) 506-4143 or visit the Pepperdine Voluteer Center Web site.