Forget The Beach

Lafayette Volunteers Pitch in From Virginia to Honduras

More than 30 students served communities this school year through the Alternative School Break (ASB) Club, with two projects taking place over spring break and two during the January interim session.

One group traveled to Danville, Va., from Jan. 15-22 to restore houses with Telamon Corporation, which constructs and

renovates houses that are then sold to low- and middle-income families. Each day, the students split into two groups and worked on restoring two homes. One group worked on a house that required cosmetic work, including painting and staining woodwork, and the other focused on construction.

Above Upper Right: Matt Verbyla ’06, Kate Brandes, and Fidel Maltez ’05 survey in Honduras. Above Left Emily White ’05 (left, L-R) and Jillian Carinci ’08 paint in Virginia. Above Lower Right: Members of Engineers Without Borders worked on a project to provide clean drinking water for communities in Honduras.

“The most rewarding part was to look at the progress we had made by the last day,” says Natalie Kamphaus ’05. “We started with the basic frame of a home and we left with the home having installation, door frames,
and drywall.”

Her ASB teammates were Sandra Goldman ’05, Emily Allen ’06, Elizabeth Litchfield ’05, Ingrid DeVries ’05, Emily White ’05, JoAnna Vetreno ’06, Jillian Carinci ’08, Kathleen Reddington ’08, Christina Morley ’06, and Amy Ahart ’97, special assistant to the dean of students.

The second interim group complemented the Engineers Without Borders’ ongoing project to provide a local water supply to villages in Honduras. The ASB team, which worked with Hondurans to build a grain house, included Emily Groves ’05, Odakwei Mills ’06, Jackie Golden ’07, Christa Kelleher ’08, and Stephanie Cote, Landis Community Outreach Center coordinator. The group arrived Jan. 8 and returned Jan. 16.

Spring break (March 14-18) marked the fifth time that an ASB group has volunteered in Sea Island, S.C., with Habitat for Humanity, where students worked on various stages of house construction.

“I joined ASB because I wanted to give back to the community at large,” says Veronica Hart ’05. “It seemed fitting to make my last spring break at Lafayette meaningful by doing a service project.”

Her teammates

Engineers Without Borders The student chapter of Engineers Without Borders-USA is featured on the cover of a National Engineers Week supplement in the Feb. 21 issue of Eastern Pennsylvania Business Journal. An article features Lafayette’s EWB chapter, which was founded last school year and is working to provide about 1,000 Hondurans with clean drinking water. EWB students attended a National Engineers Week Banquet held Feb. 25 at Green Pond Country Club in Bethlehem, where Bernard Amadei, founder of the national Engineers Without Borders organization, was keynote speaker.

were Lauren Cash ’07, Jillian Gaeta ’07, Frank Giannelli ’07, Huong Nguyen ’08, Sara Windish ’08, Meredith Jeffers ’05, Kristin Radziwanowski ’07, Steve Caruso ’06, and Kevin Worthen, associate dean of students and director of student life administration.

Another team traveled to Homestead, Fla., to volunteer with the Outpost and Wildlife Refuge in the Everglades, working on environmental and animal protection projects.

“I have always loved the environ-ment and wish to preserve the quality of outdoor life,” says Daina White ’07, who volunteered at the Gesundheit! Institute in West Virginia last year. “I also love animals and have wanted to work with them, so this trip [was] a dream for me.”

Joining her in Florida were Long Tran ’08, Allison Kramer ’08, Rasheim Donaldson ’06, Martha Petre ’08, Amy

Goldstein ’05, and Dan Ruch, AmeriCorps*VISTA staff member in the Landis Center.