What could be regarded as a national movement of community service on college campuses began at Sewanee in the early 1990s, when groups of students decided they had had enough of the traditional spring break trek to the beach.They chose instead to engage in service work, either regionally or abroad, as a healthier alternative. This was a paradigm switch, offering an entirely different view of adventure, risk and pleasure, and focusing on impoverished and marginalized communities in regional, national and international locations.
The University’s outreach office took its first service trip in 1990 to Kingston, Jamaica. Led by Dixon Myers, coordinator of outreach ministries, the program has grown in the past 25 years. This year 92 students, staff and faculty traveled to six domestic and international sites during spring break 2015. The program now takes trips during fall, Christmas, spring and summer breaks, with about 10 percent of the entire student body participating. Trips this year were to Costa Rica, Ecuador, Haiti, Miami, New Orleans and New York City.
Lay chaplain Rob McAlister and student Anna Thorson led the Costa Rica relationship with the Cloud Forest School, whose mission statement is “to love, respect and protect the natural environment.” The late Jan Drake-Lowther (who was a beloved dorm matron) and her family were Quakers instrumental in establishing the Cloud Forest Reserve in the early 1950s. The Sewanee group assisted with various building projects at the school.
Callie Sadler, assistant coordinator of outreach, led a group to Quito, Ecuador, along with student Izzy Correa, where their work centered around youth development through local church affiliates. Cameron Graham Vivanco, C’97, a full-time mission coordinator with Youth World International, continues to support the Sewanee groups in ways that give the students a spiritual context in which to serve. Junior David Prehn said that the Ecuador experience “challenged my previous notions of service, taught me fundamental lessons about life-in-community, and brought me closer to God who enables it all.”
The Haiti Trip is an interdisciplinary “hands-on” environmental problem-solving experience for outreach and biology students, as well as Haitian students. Approximately 10,000 coffee and shade tree seedlings were germinated in a nursery two years ago and this year 22 students, alongside a dozen Haitian students, surveyed 41 farms to count every seedling that had been planted from that nursery and then documented their health. Student leaders Brooke Irvine, Elizabeth Sega and Duncan Pearce assisted biology professor Deborah McGrath and outreach coordinator Dixon Myers with this trip.
Barbara Banks, a longtime staff member of the Sewanee Multicultural Affairs office, has a long history of working with both the Coral Gables High School and the Shake-A-Leg Boating Project for Disabled Children in Miami, Fla. Her dedication to these host sites enables students to get hands-on experiences in tutoring in an area of the country very different from Sewanee. Student leaders Arthur Ndoumbe and Davante Jennings are involved in organizations across the Sewanee campus. They find this, along with their outreach work in Miami, to be fulfilling, and they see this as an integral part of their education.
Assistant Dean of Students Hagi Bradley of Covington, La., chose a group of organizations to give students a broader experience of the New Orleans not seen during Mardi Gras. Among these were Hands on NOLA, Fresh Food Factory, Green Light NOLA and Second Harvest Food Bank.
“Students were particularly impressed with the mission of the Fresh Food Factory,” said student leader Kiera Coleman, who stressed the importance of what this agency seeks to accomplish. Fresh Food Factory provides healthy sustenance through a holistic service model.
In New York City, one of the staff members at the Gay Men’s Health Crisis center (GMHC), where Sewanee students learn about and care for clients with HIV/Aids, said, “When Sewanee comes, it’s like geese returning from the winter, and we know spring is right around the corner.” That endearing phrase emerges from a long-term commitment to this host agency, where students often learn more from the clients than what they have to offer. They often hear the phrase “Living with Aids” not “Dying of Aids.”
This year, admissions counselor Danielle Larsen, student leader Tran Ly and 10 students worked with GMHC and God’s Love We Deliver (GLWD), another HIV/Aids organization based in Brooklyn. GLWD delivers meals to clients who are in the final stages of life. “Preparing meals side-by-side with these volunteers, making birthday cakes for people who may only receive this one present, it is amazing,” Ly explained.
For more information about the outreach office go to <www.life.sewanee.edu/serve>.
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