Office of the Chaplain

Religious Life Newsletter: Volume 8, Fall 2005, Issue 1
Service Plunge

Summer Service Plunge!

Twenty first-year students began their SU careers early this summer by joining six upper-class mentors, Dr. Coleen Zoller, and Chaplain Mark Radecke for SU's first-ever "First Year Student Summer Service Plunge."

Focusing on the issue of homelessness, the group spent its first and last days in Selinsgrove, hearing a presentation by SU professor Dave Ramsaran and volunteering at Haven Ministries, Habitat for Humanity, and Susquehanna Valley Women in Transition.

Three of the hottest days of the summer were spent in Washington, DC, where the group volunteered at the Community for Creative Non-Violence, the world's largest homeless shelter with 1,300 beds. The group visited SU alumna Meredith Lovell '02, a seminarian completing her internship at a DC congregation that operates a small five-bed shelter. Four homeless or formerly homeless people working with the National Coalition for the Homeless shared their stories with the group. For the concluding activity, called "Bread for the Journey," participants assembled bag lunches and bottled water and distributed them personally in places around DC where homeless people spend their days.

Many Plunge participants said that personal contact with people we normally ignore or turn away from was the most valuable part of the experience.

Funded in part by a grant from Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, the Plunge will be repeated next summer for incoming members of the Class of 2010.