My friends and I regularly perform volunteer service in communities both locally and abroad.
Volunteering in a soup kitchen or performing other forms of community service such as rehabilitating blighted homes in depressed locations or traveling to southern Mississippi to help repair homes devastated by Hurricane Katerina is a regular part of my life. Research has shown that volunteering enhances the dimensions of wellness, especially areas such as spiritual and environmental wellness–a theme that I discuss and encourage among my students to explore in the courses I teach. In education circles the concept is known as service-learning. Click here to read an article I co-authored about the value of student volunteering: Service Learning.PDF
Some of my more recent volunteer experiences have included:
- Traveling to D’Iberville, Mississippi in summer 2006 with a group called Lend-A-Hand to repair homes devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Attached in our Lend-A-Hand volunteer handbook and a photo of the team’s matching tee-shirts.
- Traveling to Dayton, Ohio in summer 2007 to volunteer on behalf of a group called Group Workcamp to rehabilitate blighted homes in depressed locations. I also volunteered at the Water Street rescue mission located in Lancaster City, PA in 2007 working in the soup kitchen serving meals and cleaning tables.
- Traveling to Moscow, Russia in summer 2012 where I volunteered in a soup kitchen operated by a church organization serving meals and cleaning tables, and also helping to renovate a basement food pantry.
- Traveling to Pursglove, West Virginia in summer 2014, an old coal mining community located in the heart of Appalachia. While there I volunteered in efforts to repair the Shack Neighborhood House recreation facility, working on projects such as repairing old stairs, putting down new flooring, and hanging drywall.
