DIOCESAN NEWS
07/23/10
................................................................................................................
HomeWork volunteer program touches lives
By Jeff Artigues
STARKVILLE — During the week of June 14-18, 16 high school students and a handful of adult volunteers quietly made a positive impact in the lives of some Starkville residents. 
For the fifth year in a row, the high school service project called HomeWork, sponsored by the Youth Office of the Diocese of Jackson, touched the lives of students and adult volunteers as well as the people who benefited from their efforts.
As many as 30 students or as few as a dozen have participated each year.
In previous years, students helped build homes with Habitat for Humanity, sanding, painting, prepping floors, laying tile, building storage sheds, roofing, tilling, and laying sod, among other work.
Students helped transform houses into homes as they worked side-by-side with the families who would one day live in them.
They have also helped out at the local Salvation Army Thrift Store which offers assistance with electric/water bills, rent, or food and clothing, and the Palmer Home Thrift Store which benefits orphans in the Columbus area by providing Christian homes in which they can be raised. 
The youth have provided home or yard work for those in need in the Starkville area.
This year HomeWork students woke up around 5:30 a.m. on two days to make a two-hour drive to Indianola to glean corn. This corn would have been plowed under and wasted were it not for the efforts of these students.
And because of their efforts about 30 homebound patrons of the local St. Vincent de Paul food pantry had fresh Indianola sweet corn delivered to their doors.
In addition the students built raised vegetable gardens for three St. Vincent de Paul patrons. These families will be harvesting tomatoes, bell peppers, squash, greens and watermelons in the next month or two.
The final project was working with the local Habitat for Humanity group for three days to build a playhouse/storage shed that was raffled off; $1000 was donated to the local Habitat for Humanity office.
Obviously plenty of work goes on during a normal week of HomeWork, but students also participate in morning and evening prayers, relax in a pool after work, develop prayer partners, attend Mass together, go to movies and games, share affirmation bags, and form lasting friendships.
Anyone who has participated in HomeWork will tell you it is something special; anyone who has benefited from the work will tell you how thankful they are. HomeWork makes the powerful statement to high school students that there are plenty of people in need who can benefit from service work right in local communities.
This week of service work is personal. Students see the results of their work firsthand. They see the faces of those who will live in a home they helped build. They see the faces of the people who will eat the fresh corn they picked. They see the faces of the people who will reap what they have sown in the gardens they built. They see the face of Christ in all the people they help.
(Jeff Artigues is pastoral minister at St. Joseph Parish in Starkville.)
TOP
HOME 
Back to Diocesan News
|
