As the center of Catholic values on the UIC campus, the John Paul II Newman Center recognizes the crucial importance of helping students to help others. In the spirit of the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself, the Newman community strives to reach out to others beyond its walls to those in need in the greater Chicago area, and to impress upon the students the vital imperative of service to others, an imperative that is the crux of the Christian experience.

The Newman Center offers a variety of service opportunities to the students throughout the school year: 

Service Sundays - each month dozens of students make hundreds of sandwiches for the homeless and hungry at the Franciscan Outreach Center in Bucktown.

Blood Drives  - to benefit the UIC Hospital blood bank. 

UIC Gives Back - during Thanksgiving, groups of students sponsor families in the Little Village area of Chicago, bringing boxes filled with all the family would need for a full Thanksgiving dinner. 

Christian Appalachian Project - during Spring Break, a delegation of students travel to the Appalachian region to help rebuild houses.

Big Brothers Big Sisters program - students serve as a mentor to a specific child in need, apend time with that child every week.

The Newman Center hosts a branch of the St Vincent De Paul Society, which meets twice a month as students explore the meaning behind the Christian call to serve, learning how to integrate service to the poor into their understanding of leading a faith-filled life. The St Vincent De Paul Society strives to take acts of service further, going beyond the idea of service as doing something nice, to the understanding that to serve is to follow God's call, and indeed, to be fully human.