Winter Break - Service in Appalachia
Elizabeth - Tuesday, February 05, 2008 - Over winter break, 6 DU students traveled to Vanceburg, Kentucky to volunteer with the Glenmary Home Missioners for a week. We stayed at the Glenmary Farm and volunteered with a variety of sites in the Lewis County area. Lewis County is an extremely poor area of our country. The unemployment rate is almost 20 percent and nearly 38 percent of residents live below the poverty level. In Lewis County, 50 percent of infants to preschool age children live under the poverty line and 11.5 percent of the mothers are 10 to 19 years of age.
While there, we immersed ourselves in the culture and tried to embrace the concept of simple living. This was probably the toughest part for most of us! Although we met before the trip to talk about what we would be doing and prepare for it, it was still extremely difficult to not use cell phones and iPods for an entire week!
Another part of the simple lifestyle at the farm was that each group took turns cooking and cleaning. For some people, it was their first time cooking an entire meal! It was such a great experience to work together to make tasty meals that we all sat down and enjoyed together.
We split up into two groups and each group went to a different service site each day. Places like the food pantry, clothing store, and construction sites required more physical labor, while places like the adult day care center and the senior center made us embrace the idea of "ministry of presence"--one of the farm's main concepts.
The construction site building homes for underprivileged families was probably the most fun for all of us! The first group that went helped by sweeping and using the shop vac to clean up a few of the homes to prepare their floors and walls to be finished with tile and paint. The second group helped with insulation...and I think they got more on them than in the house!
One thing that I noticed while in Kentucky is that everyone really takes the time to slow down and enjoy life. It was so nice to be able to be in that kind of an environment, especially coming from our fast-paced and stressed lives. People that we met in Lewis County were so welcoming and happy to meet us. It really struck me how welcoming they were to complete strangers. So many people took the time to stop and ask us how our day was going, and actually showed a genuine interest in our response.
This trip was completely student-run. After deciding to go, the six of us sat down together and came up with fundraising ideas and put our plans into action. Working so hard before the trip to make it possible for us to go made it much more worthwhile! All of the faculty and staff were very supportive of us, and now we’re hoping to make it an annual trip.
