You may see an unusually large number of people with rakes, clippers, paint brushes and such around town Saturday — like, thousands of them. They’re participating in the University of Kansas Big Event.

The annual day of volunteering starts with volunteers gathering at 9 a.m. in KU’s Ambler Student Recreation Center parking lot, then fanning out across the city to work on projects from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

About 2,400 volunteers — all KU students, faculty and staff — are signed up to participate, said 2017 Big Event executive director Bailee Myers, a KU senior from Topeka. They’ll be helping with projects from gardening to painting to clearing brush at just over 300 job sites, both private residences and public locations.

“Our goal is just to create a bridge between the community and the campus,” Myers said.

Two years ago the Big Event was rained out and, with no pre-arranged contingency plan, couldn’t be rescheduled — basically, it was too big. Organizers have since included rain dates in their planning. This year’s is April 29, just in case.

It’s too late to sign up to volunteer, or to get help from volunteers, for this year. However, Myers said, the date for next year has already been set for April 14, 2018. Information about participating is online at thebigeventku.com.

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• I’m the Journal-World’s KU and higher ed reporter. See all the newspaper’s KU coverage here. Reach me by email at sshepherd@ljworld.com, by phone at 832-7187, on Twitter @saramarieshep or via Facebook at Facebook.com/SaraShepherdNews.