Danny Crawford has been acting and putting on shows for any audience as long as he could remember. Stage fright was something he never had to deal with, yet the thin sheen of sweat pooling on his palms was something he associated with the feeling. His impending audience had gotten under his skin as anxiety and nerves took over. He mentally reviewed the crisp script in front of him, reading it to the best of his ability despite the tremors caused by his shaking hands.
“Last year’s show, from what I heard at least, was apparently not great,” Crawford says, referring to the yearly skit put on by the New York group of counselors at Camp Reynal. “And we wanted to make it outstanding this year for the kids.” Of course, the doctors milling around didn’t help make him more confident about this task.
Crawford and the group of Reynal volunteers are part of a growing number of students who are partaking in more nontraditional community service such as working at a camp like Reynal, which caters to those who cannot get the typical camp experience due to chronic illness or disability.
These students are looking for more hands-on volunteer work, to more directly help people, and the evidence of this speaks for itself. Of course, with this extra effort comes an extra reward. Besides just seeing the gratitude on the faces of those they are affecting, the lessons that the students learn change who they are and stay with them for a lifetime. These lessons may have differed from expectations, but that’s what keeps them coming back for more.
Gone are the days of mere fundraisers and toy drives. These students are not content just having a bake sale and sending the profits off to Galveston for the Hurricane Ike victims. They want to help the families rebuild their lives by helping them rebuild foundations on their houses or help poor families in Tijuana, Mexico build schools.
These trips to Mexico and Texas are orchestrated by the Manhattan College L.O.V.E.—Lasallian Outreach Volunteer Experience—organization, a branch of Campus Ministry and Social Action. Director Jenn Edwards says, “Numbers and interest has certainly increased—we had over 40 students apply for each trip, whereas last year they didn’t even have enough people to go to the Ecuador trip.”
In addition, the students who attend these trips learn so much more than students who just participate in typical volunteer activities. After they have been cleared through an interview process meant to weed out those who might be going for the wrong reasons, they are told what work will be expected of them and what they will be learning while on their trip.
Each group learns something unique to the area while helping to rebuild or work with the camp children. The trip to Mexico for example allows students to learn about Mexican culture as well as immigration and border issues in addition to mixing cement for schools. A trip to a camp in Maine called Camp Sunshine, in which students attended “bereavement week,” teaches students lessons in dealing with grief and loss of a child. Immersion trips, such as those to Ecuador, teach students about “being” by putting them directly in the culture for a week to experience exactly how the Ecuadorians live.
Expectations of these trips typically differ from what the students actually get out of the process. Matt Rudkin, leader of Camp Sunshine, expected the trip to be “incredibly taxing and emotionally draining.” Yet, he came out “surprisingly uplifted” having witnessed the bonds that were formed between everyone involved.
“I saw in 14 weeks a group of 11 diverse and unique Manhattan College students come together to unify behind a single vision. We had a strong sense of unity and I think the LOVE program is a great way to bring all kinds of people together,” says Rudkin, who learned the honor in celebrating the life of a lost loved one as well as to “cherish life and keep my priorities in perspective.”
Crawford had similar things to say. “I didn’t expect it to be as fun as it was. I had awful visions of sickly kids with a few years left to live, but the second the kids got off the bus you forgot they had kidney problems. I learned to live each day to the fullest, have no regrets, help others and have fun along the way. I couldn’t swallow a Benadryl pill until I was fifteen years old and my 8 and 9 year old campers had shots and huge pills to take every day.”
Students who go on these trips often find themselves returning. “LOVE gives students a chance to explore their commitment to social justice, enhance reflection on their own faith and spirituality and also to develop quality value-based relationships with not only their peers on the trip with them, but with the communities in which they find themselves doing service…they bring this knowledge back to Manhattan College and incorporate it into the way they live their lives and more often than not, they join us again to learn more,” says Edwards.
Crawford for one knows he will return. “It was the most fun I’ve ever had in my life,” he said. “They taught me so much about my life and their life that I have to return to the camp for years to come to be with them again.”
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