Imagine how it would feel to deliver two truckloads a week of nearly-new home goods to local churches that then distribute those items to people in the neighborhood who most need them.

Students and staff at Grand Canyon University (GCU) in Phoenix know precisely how gratifying that is because, for more than a year, the school has served as a hub for CityServe, a national faith-based collaborative network designed to help local churches and nonprofit agencies create greater impact and offer hope to their communities.

“GCU is the first university in the country to serve as a CityServe hub with a goal to equip and mobilize students to meet community needs,” says Brian Mueller, the university’s president.

Each week, retail partners such as Costco, Walgreens, Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Tuft & Needle deliver about $60,000 worth of tables, chairs, mattresses, sofas, heaters, diapers and other household items to GCU’s 87,000-square-foot warehouse.

“We then have more than 100 points of distribution—mostly inner-city churches—throughout the state,” Mueller says. “We go west to Yuma, north to Native American reservations, south to the Mexican border, and focus a lot right here in Maryvale.”

Since the affiliation with CityServe began close to a year and a half ago, more than $5 million worth of donations have been made in areas where the need is greatest. In the next five years, Mueller expects the contributions to double.

The university notes that through this program, nearly 10,000 families have been impacted, and students and staff have devoted more than 4,500 volunteer hours to this cause. The project is a hallmark of GCU’s five-point plan established in 2015 with the goal of improving the community surrounding the university.

“First, we want to meet the physical needs of those in our community,” Mueller explains. “The next priority is ensuring their safety, followed by helping to improve home values. Then we want to give everyone an equal chance at education that we hope will lead to more good jobs.”

These are the components of the five-point plan:

Serving families in need. In addition to expanding its commitment to CityServe, Mueller says, more and more GCU students are choosing to volunteer in the community.

“Our students are also doing a lot of ministry work in the neighborhood on their own, in addition to what they do in conjunction with the university. Some of our students are helping Syrian refugees in the area learn English, for example, while others are volunteering at St. Vincent de Paul, a charity that provides clothing, food and shelter to those in need.”

Making neighborhoods safer. GCU is in the midst of a multi-million-dollar partnership with the Phoenix Police Department to increase safety and eliminate crime in the neighborhoods surrounding the university. In the first seven years of the program, crime in the areas of concern decreased nearly 20%. This compares to a 3.5% drop citywide during the same time frame.Improving home values. GCU is providing both the funding and manpower to renovate an entire community of homes in the surrounding neighborhood through the world’s largest partnership with Habitat for Humanity. Since 2015, more than $4.6 million has been raised and more than 29,000 volunteer hours have contributed to renovating 421 homes in the community.

“Our goal is to get to 800 homes that have been renovated or remodeled,” Mueller says.

Supporting K-12 education. The Learning Lounge program continues to provide free tutoring and mentoring to students at Alhambra High School, and has expanded to more than 300 schools, serving 5,200 K-12 students with over 65,000 visits and 153,000 hours of study. The university has awarded 650 full-ride scholarships to GCU to students at more than 60 high schools in Phoenix and Glendale.“We want to get to 1,000 full-ride scholarships,” says Mueller, “so those students can pursue study in fields such as engineering, computer science, information technology, and nursing.”

Creating jobs on campus and in west Phoenix. GCU now employs more than 14,000 people with 10 new business enterprises established near the campus—including Grand Canyon University Golf Course, Grand Canyon University Hotel, and the Grand Canyon Beverage Company—employing 500 people, says Mueller. In addition, 32 new businesses are currently incubating on campus, and are given free space and free utilities as long as they hire university students as interns or employees. As the businesses grow, they’re moved off campus to a more permanent location in the West Valley.“

At the top of the chain are good jobs, so families can chart their own future and take care of themselves without being dependent on the government,” he continues. Through all of these steps, “the goal is to help as many families as possible become self-sufficient.”

Mueller has been delighted to discover how many GCU students enjoy volunteering to help the community.

“People feel good about going to school here, in part because of how they can help the community. We live in a divided country, but I find that working to help the most vulnerable pulls us together in a way that nothing else can. When we’re out there renovating houses, no one talks about politics. We just talk about helping people.”