Six or seven days a month, Debra Cleveland saddles up to assist a program in which disabled people go horseback riding.

At the Davis Farmers Market every Saturday, you will see Alexandra Navrotsky and her "pet" project: Labrador retrievers put up for adoption after being rescued from shelters, given up by owners, or suffering other hard-luck stories.

One night a week, Cris Breivik helps his community by putting on a hospital smock and holding babies.

Cleveland, Navrotsky and Breivik are among hundreds of UC Davis faculty, staff and students who volunteer for dozens of causes on and off campus. How much time? One measure comes from the UC Davis Human Corps office, which asks community organizations annually about faculty, staff and student volunteerism.

For 2000-01, the survey tallied 1,390 volunteers and 240,778 hours of service. In 2003-04, the last year for which statistics are available, 1,108 volunteers put in 294,151 hours of work, according to Human Corps, part of the Internship and Career Center.

Pam Swartwood, a center coordinator, said she believes the increase in hours is partly attributable to community service requirements in high schools and middle schools. "By the time students get to college, they have already embraced community service," Swartwood said.

Human Corps maintains a Web site that features a database of volunteer opportunities with groups such as Davis Community Meals, Head Start or the California Wilderness Coalition.

"Time is the most valuable commodity," said Navrotsky, a professor of chemical engineering and materials science, who has been volunteering her time with Central California Labrador Retriever Rescue for nearly four years.

Satisfaction comes from "knowing you make a difference in saving a dog from being put down," said Navrotsky, director of NEAT, the organized research unit on Nanomaterials in the Environment, Agriculture and Technology.

At the farmers market each week, Navrotsky talks to people about the secret to success with dogs: "The most important thing is to be willing to train them." She said she can tell when a family and a dog "click" — by seeing happiness on their faces.

Cleveland, Web content coordinator for student recruitment, went to a national Web site, volunteermatch.org, typed in her location and interests — and came across the Horseplay Therapeutic Riding Center, a nonprofit program in Dixon.

"I wanted a community service activity," she said — and this one fit perfectly with her familiarity with horsemanship. She had a pony as a youngster, and she owned a horse through her college years at UC Davis, where she earned a degree in English in 1980.

Cleveland said Horseplay participants get a "special experience" — one that is 6 or 7 feet off the ground, atop a horse. The riders are aged 4 to early 30s, and they all have physical or developmental disabilities, such as autism or cerebral palsy.

Most of the participants have mobility problems, but not during Horseplay's 45-minute sessions. "Being that high off the ground, taller than everybody else, and being able to guide and steer a 1,000- to-1,200-pound animal, is a very enabling experience," said Cleveland, a Horseplay volunteer for three years.

She noted that human and horse walking motions are very similar. So Horseplay participants "get neurological stimulation that makes them feel like they're walking."

Instructors like Cleveland incorporate games into Horseplay sessions. For example, participants will ride to a horse-high mailbox, pick up an object, and deliver it elsewhere in the arena.

Cleveland assists at Horseplay every Wednesday afternoon — her UC Davis position is 75 percent, to give her time for her volunteer work — and two Saturdays a month.

Breivik, an academic counselor and outreach coordinator in the Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies who earned a master's degree from UC Davis in 1990, knew exactly the type of volunteer work that he wanted to do.

It just took him a while to find it.

About 20 years ago, he said, he read a newspaper magazine article titled "Men Who Hold Babies," about volunteers who cuddled and rocked premature babies in New York City hospitals. "That's what I want to do — that's my thing," Breivik recalled saying.

He said he called every hospital in the Sacramento area, and the volunteer coordinators thought he was crazy. They did not have baby-holding volunteer programs, Breivik said. And, he added, the coordinators expressed amazement at the thought of having a man do such work.

But, though he has no children of his own, Breivik loves babies.

About four years ago, at a doctor's office, he overheard a conversation between two receptionists. One mentioned her volunteer work as a baby holder at Sutter Memorial Hospital in downtown Sacramento.

Breivik signed up, and he has been one of only a handful of male "cuddlers" in the hospital's special care nursery ever since. Some of the children have been born with drug dependencies, and many of the babies have been born prematurely — like Breivik himself.

"Cuddlers" fill the gaps when parents are not around. "We take care of who's unhappy," he said, talking about babies who seem to never stop crying. "If they fall asleep in my arms, I won't go looking (for another baby to hold)," he said. "They need that moment of care."

And, he said, being held by men is just as important as being held by women, to make the nurturing process more like a traditional family setting.

Some of the children, though, do not go home to traditional families. Some children may be placed in foster homes; other children may go home with their mothers, but the fathers may not be in the picture.

He recalled the time, during his first few weeks of volunteering, when he held a baby girl and talked to her. She gave him a look as if to say, "Wha-a-a-a-a-a-t?"

"That's probably the first time she had heard a male voice," Breivik said.

Most volunteers agree that they get more out of their work than the participants do. "It's therapy for me," Cleveland said.

And Breivik said of his work with babies: "It's such an easy thing to do. All they want me to do is hold them."

How Can You Volunteer?

• Human Corps Community Service Office, 225 South Hall, 752-3813 or hcorps@ucdavis.edu, http://humancorps.ucdavis.edu (click on "student," "faculty" or "staff," then click on "Human Corps Database" for volunteer opportunities)

Human Corps "promotes service through action," according to its mission statement. Each year, the unit organizes a Week of Service, during which individuals and groups are encouraged to spend some time volunteering. The 2006 Week of Service is scheduled from Feb. 10 through 17. Human Corps plans to prearrange assignments in two- to four-hour shifts, which volunteers may sign up for online, individually or in groups.

Here are other regional and national resources:

• Hands On Sacramento, www.handsonsacto.org (click on "Ongoing Volunteer Opportunities" to see if there is something that interests you, then click on "Volunteer" to sign up)
• VolunteerMatch, www.volunteermatch.org (enter your ZIP code, how far you are willing to travel, and your interests)
• Idealist, a project of Action Without Borders, www.idealist.org (click on "Volunteers" and then "Find an opportunity")