Junior Kate Rizzieri sat in the blazing sun during her break from hammering nails into wooden boards and listened to the incredible stories of the people she helped during the Appalachia Work Camp. While there, she helped families who needed something built or rebuilt, and gained a life- changing experience out of it as well.
Rizzieri first heard of the Appalachia work camp when she saw it advertised in the Daily Bulletin.
“I read the advertisement and thought it sounded cool. I always wanted to do a mission trip, but my parents wouldn’t let me go far away. This seemed like the perfect opportunity,” she said.
The Appalachia work camp helps poor, oppressed or marginalized people who need something built, but can’t afford it. During her trip last summer, Rizzieri and her group of other volunteers rebuilt a deck with a wheelchair ramp for an elderly couple.
“It’s a lot of fun,” Rizzieri said. “If you do it once, you have to do it again. It changes your life.”
Rizzieri plans to go again this summer.
The Appalachia work camp is not the only service trip opportunity available for students. This is the first year JC is offering a service trip to Honduras. Fourteen seniors will be going on the week-long service trip towards the end of May as a part of their Senior Projects.
Students attending will be staying at Greenfield Children’s home in Roatan, Honduras. While there, each student will be involved in a different project, but they will all be working with children from the children’s home. The students will be doing mini sports camps for the kids, working in the medical clinic, crafting art projects, and tutoring children.
Social studies teacher Jake Hollin got the idea of doing service trips through JC two to three years ago. Hollin and his wife worked with the Peace Corps for two years about 15 years ago.
“[The Peace Corps] was an amazing experience,” Hollin said. “I wanted to give a glimpse of that to students here.”
“I am nervous for the trip because I know it will be very shocking when we get down there and take up the same lifestyle that the people there live. But I am also so, so excited because I know it will be incredible and will change my life,” senior Rebecca Kotula said.
According to Kotula, seniors who are going on the trip have been given bookmarks with photos of the children on them so they can pray for them.
Kotula first heard about this service trip through the Daily Bulletin as well. “I didn’t pay much attention to it for a while. Then my mom mentioned it to me one day and it sounded interesting, so I looked into it further,” Kotula said.
“When I heard about the trip I was going through a tough time, and it felt like it would be the perfect thing for me. I have never been on a mission trip before, and it seemed like it would be a trip that would completely change me for the better” Kotula said.
“Service trips are great because it gets people out of their comfort zone,” Hollin said. “You end up getting as much as you give.”
Caitlin Wolfarth is a News Editor for The Patriot and jcpatriot.com.