Assistant Multimedia Editor
It seems that students of Springfield College cannot get enough of giving back to the community. After many volunteered to help rebuild for Extreme Makeover Home Edition, and with Humanics In Action Day taking place earlier this week, more students are already moving on to their next project. The Springfield College Service Corps will be helping Rebuilding Together this weekend, as they hope to further the positive impact made by SC students in the early part of the new school year.
Started over 30 years ago, Rebuilding Together has been helping the less fortunate, veterans and those misplaced from their homes due to natural disasters. Rebuilding Together has been putting forth efforts in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana over five years ago, and even saw Springfield College students help the efforts last March during an alternative Spring Break trip headed by the Hillel Community on campus.
Now, the Springfield division will be doing its part to help those affected by the June 1 tornado.
“Rebuilding Together will be helping basically all of the Springfield citizens in any way that they can,” said Emily Conlon, the president for the SC Service Corps. “They’ll be repairing anything from roofs to plumbing to anything that these residents need.”
Rebuilding Together combines the efforts of hired contractors, as well as volunteers in the surrounding community, to reach their goal. In this case, Rebuilding Together hopes to repair a total of 25 homes over the course of five days, stretching from Saturday, Oct. 1 through Wednesday, Oct. 5. With such a daunting task to accomplish, Springfield College has offered its services and hopes to help make a difference.
“I came across [Rebuilding Together] through Charlene Elvers, who is the Director of Student Volunteer Programs,” said Conlon. “We were supposed to do this for Humanics In Action Day but that fell through.”
Although getting a Humanics group to participate fell short, Conlon kept pushing for some sort of involvement with Rebuilding Together. After garnering enough interest, Conlon had enough volunteers to put a team together to help the cause, yet, not everybody was able to sign up as expected.
“We had a ton of students who wanted to register, and unfortunately, registration closed Monday, but I still have a large amount of students looking to help out,” said Conlon. “We’re looking to pull something out of our sleeves and see what Rebuilding Together needs from us that we can do maybe on campus or within the community.”
Those who were able to sign up will be volunteering roughly eight hours of their weekend on either Saturday or Sunday, and for the ambitious, both days. “We will be busing students over from Abbey Circle at 7:30 a.m. They have a breakfast and opening ceremony, and then we will go to the home sites that they send us to,” said Conlon.
Whether given the opportunity to use a hammer and nails or install a new toilet, anyone interested is advised to contact Conlon at econlon@springfieldcollege.edu.
Regardless of what is asked of the Springfield College volunteers, the helpful spirit of the students will continue, no matter what the task.
“We’re going to try and round people up, and if we can’t get them over to the home site, we’re going to do something here [on campus],” said Conlon. “We’re going to do the best that we can and help the community, go out and talk to community members, make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches if people need those; anything that the community needs, we’re going to make it happen.”
Nate Brown may be reached at nbrown3@springfieldcollege.edu