Gretchen Noe, a senior with a double major in business and political science, had intended to head toward a career in business. But trips to three different parts of the globe changed her career plans and goals.
Noe has traveled to Hawaii and to Honduras on the annual service projects sponsored by the Chaplain's Office and coordinated by Oxford Chaplain Sammy Clark and Emory Assistant Chaplain Bobbi Patterson. She also spent last summer in Hong Kong on a business internship. The stark contrast between the two types of work convinced Noe to go into non-profit work, and she has applied to work with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps after graduation.
When Noe signed up for the Hawaii trip, she didn't know anyone else going, a problem that was quickly remedied as the group worked together building Habitat for Humanity houses. "The work was hard but fun," she said. "You meet the families you're doing the work for. A lot of people moved from site to site, but I stayed on one site, working with the same family. You learn a lot about yourself on these trips."
Last summer was a busy one for Noe, with the Honduras trip in May followed by the summer internship in Hong Kong. "After comparing the two trips," she said, "I decided I wanted to go into non-profit work. I got a job this year at the Atlanta Community Food Bank working with the volunteer department." If she is accepted by the Jesuit Volunteers Corps, she hopes to work at a food bank in Spokane, Wash.
Steve Berry, a senior, also went on the trip to Honduras. "The first day we got there we went to an elementary school where we gave the students there fluoride treatments. Every day after that we returned to Pacura, the village the school was in, and we assembled in the center of the village and began going out to individual homes to help them complete work on outhouses. That involved laying the cement foundations, building little cement thrones and helping them put up the wooden sides." Berry said his experience in Honduras made him reconsider an earlier desire to join the Peace Corps. "I was shocked to see just how little material goods are in a third world country, what it really means that most people's houses have no floors." He was also troubled by the effects of urbanization and the negative influence of western culture. The trip also motivated him to learn. "My interest was piqued again in everything from a different culture to different wildlife to the language."
As a result of his experiences, Berry has applied both to the Peace Corps and to Teach for America, a two-year program where graduates teach in what is termed "under-resourced" schools in rural or inner city areas. Although he won't hear from either program until shortly before graduation, he knows he is in a pool of Peace Corps candidates from which finalists will be chosen to go to Africa to teach biology and chemistry.
The reconsiderations of life goals by Noe and Berry are not unusual, according to Clark, who began the trips with Oxford students in 1985. Clark had been a missionary in Peru from 1973-1977 and then had pastored an urban Atlanta church. "When I came to Oxford," he said, "I was interested in helping students see what life was like in third world countries."
"Looking through the years, so many people have gone into the Peace Corps as a result of these trips; a couple of people have gone into the ministry," Clark recalled. "Everyone has been waked up in a way that they've begun to reconsider life goals and what they're going to do."
Over the years the group has been to Peru and Mexico City, as well as Honduras and Hawaii. "The format of our trips is that we return to sites on a kind of regular basis," said Patterson. "We try to have four or five sites and we rotate so that every four or five years we return to the sites." That kind of continuing contact, according to Patterson, develops a sense of community between Emory and the sites. Even though the group doesn't return to every site every year, contacts are maintained. "Students sometimes go back on their own to visit, to work and to volunteer," she said.
This year, the group will travel to Sitka, Alaska, a new site. "We've had to lose two rotating sites," said Patterson. "Peru, because of the Shining Path, became too dangerous. The Mexico City area was too rough; we couldn't keep people healthy."
In Alaska from May 10-31, students will be living in a youth hostel associated with the Methodist Church, and will construct a kitchen for the hostel, do some repair work on the parsonage and work with the local Tlingit Indians on some home repair. There is some time built in for play as well, said Patterson, because the trips, by their nature, are very intense and draining. "It's really what's called an immersion model," she said. "Most of the resources we take for granted are taken away -- familiar food, beds, hot water."
Students pay their own way on the trips, a concern for both Patterson and Clark. Each year, they scramble for funds to supplement students who can't otherwise afford the trip. They would like to establish some type of endowment, both to avoid that yearly scramble and to ensure a diverse group of participants. "The interest in these trips grows exponentially each year," said Patterson, "and that increases the money dilemna. If we don't get outside funding, we end up with a very homogenous group--only the rich kids."
-- Nancy M. Spitler