2008 Woodie Awards
Students lend helping hand
CMU volunteers use break to help rebuild New Orleans
By: Brysen Bernstein
Issue date: 1/7/08 Section: News
Not even sickness could keep a team of CMU students from helping rebuild New Orleans during winter break.
Five of the 12 students in site leader Karly Satkowiak's group had to be hospitalized, cutting their trip short.
"We thought it was food poisoning at first, but it wasn't," the Bay City junior said. "They had a bacterial flu-type thing."
Satkowiak was part of an Alternative Break team that traveled to the embattled city shortly after the fall semester ended.
But even with half of the team hospitalized for a day and a shortened time frame, the group still managed to help build a community center over the holiday break and make it home before Christmas Day.
"The first day we were there we cleared a lot for a community center to be built on," Satkowiak said. "The second day we caulked the house and primed it. And the third day we worked on painting it."
Dearborn senior Lauren Campbell said she also spent a portion of her holiday break doing volunteer work in Louisiana.
Campbell said she and 19 others went about an hour south of New Orleans with His House Christian Fellowship to pitch in and help however they were needed.
"We built a porch at one person's trailer, nailed down some base boards at another house and did a lot of drywall work," she said.
Campbell said this experience was a bit different than the volunteer work she has done in the past through the Alternative Breaks program at CMU. She said their work was not only meant to help people, but to help in a way that somehow showed God's love, which she feels they accomplished.
But even though she has had experience volunteering in the past, Campbell said experience is not something that someone needs to help, but it was something she was lacking herself.
"Even if we're not that great at building, we kind of had to learn. Just the fact that people are going down there to help them, I think, shows them that people still care and that we haven't forgotten that they're still rebuilding," Campbell said.
She said it was weird to see all the Christmas decorations without any snow, but made it home in time to enjoy a white Christmas.
Volunteer Center Coordinator Shawna Ross said the Alternative Breaks program has been sending students globally since 1994.
"The goal is to benefit the community in which they work, but if you talk to the students, I think you'll find that they'll say the benefit was theirs," Ross said.
news@cm-life.com
Five of the 12 students in site leader Karly Satkowiak's group had to be hospitalized, cutting their trip short.
"We thought it was food poisoning at first, but it wasn't," the Bay City junior said. "They had a bacterial flu-type thing."
Satkowiak was part of an Alternative Break team that traveled to the embattled city shortly after the fall semester ended.
But even with half of the team hospitalized for a day and a shortened time frame, the group still managed to help build a community center over the holiday break and make it home before Christmas Day.
"The first day we were there we cleared a lot for a community center to be built on," Satkowiak said. "The second day we caulked the house and primed it. And the third day we worked on painting it."
Dearborn senior Lauren Campbell said she also spent a portion of her holiday break doing volunteer work in Louisiana.
Campbell said she and 19 others went about an hour south of New Orleans with His House Christian Fellowship to pitch in and help however they were needed.
"We built a porch at one person's trailer, nailed down some base boards at another house and did a lot of drywall work," she said.
Campbell said this experience was a bit different than the volunteer work she has done in the past through the Alternative Breaks program at CMU. She said their work was not only meant to help people, but to help in a way that somehow showed God's love, which she feels they accomplished.
But even though she has had experience volunteering in the past, Campbell said experience is not something that someone needs to help, but it was something she was lacking herself.
"Even if we're not that great at building, we kind of had to learn. Just the fact that people are going down there to help them, I think, shows them that people still care and that we haven't forgotten that they're still rebuilding," Campbell said.
She said it was weird to see all the Christmas decorations without any snow, but made it home in time to enjoy a white Christmas.
Volunteer Center Coordinator Shawna Ross said the Alternative Breaks program has been sending students globally since 1994.
"The goal is to benefit the community in which they work, but if you talk to the students, I think you'll find that they'll say the benefit was theirs," Ross said.
news@cm-life.com
