In addition to its many programs serving the greater Boston area, the University encourages its students to contribute to the welfare and vitality of their city. During 2000-2001, Boston University undergraduates spent more than 50,000 hours volunteering in greater Boston, through programs organized by the Community Service Center. Additional volunteer activities are coordinated by University offices, including the Martin Luther King Jr. Center, Marsh Chapel, and the Student Activities Office.

In 2001, more than four hundred freshmen spent the week before the start of fall classes volunteering with the Community Service Center's First-Year Student Outreach Project (FYSOP). Under the supervision of student leaders, participants in FYSOP contributed approximately 10,000 hours of service at twenty-seven organizations and locations throughout the Boston area. There are eight areas of community service: AIDS awareness, affordable housing, disabilities, elderly people, environment, hunger and homelessness, children, and gender issues. FYSOP is known nationally as a model college community-service orientation program and has inspired similar programs at other institutions.

A member of the University's women's basketball team conducts a skills clinic for children at the West End House Boys and Girls Club of Allston-Brighton.

Children at Brighton's Winship and Garfield Elementary Schools are paired with student volunteers in the Community Service Center's Siblings program. The children gain a role model and a friend with whom to share cultural, recreational, and educational activities.

The Community Service Center sends volunteer tutors to six Boston area after-school sites to work with children, ages six to twelve. Volunteers also go to Brighton High School to teach students English as a Second Language and to help with their homework. The College of Communication's student organization, Champions, runs the Jackson-Mann Community School Adult Education Program.

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