Campus helps the local community

Hundreds of students, staff, and faculty from across Union’s campus gathered at the Clocktower on a breezy September morning to celebrate the 41st year of Project Impact. Several Campus Ministries (CM) staff handed out this year’s iconic t-shirts while Student Association (SA) leaders served bagels and juice for breakfast.

Project Impact started in 1981 as a project to paint homes for elderly or disabled community members. Twenty-four thousand volunteers and 140,000 hours later, it has blossomed into a massive initiative that, this year, covered over 30 work sites with much more than just painting, including yard work, cleaning, food distribution, shelf stocking and even barn cleaning.

Project Impact happens annually every September. Classes are canceled for the day and so are most campus offices so that all can participate in the initiative. Volunteers spend the morning working at each volunteer site and return to the Clocktower for a pizza feast.

The event is completely organized and led by students. Adam Anderson and Kylee Anderson, CM Outreach Coordinators, spent much of their time this summer preparing for the event by keeping in touch with several local community organizations. Each site also had a team leader that coordinated rides and contact information, many of them students as well.

Pastor Guadalupe Montour of the College View Church of Seventh-day Adventists shared about her experience leading the group that went to CEDARS, a nonprofit which provides housing for homeless kids. They also help provide older kids and young moms with apartments. However, to the volunteers that served there, what they did may not seem to be a big deal. Their job was to take donations that had been received and organize them—and it only took them an hour.

However, Montour was confident that their work “wasn’t done in vain.” While many projects included big things like handing out food to the homeless or painting churches, even the little things matter. They found the area disorganized and hard to access, but in the end, it was totally worth it. This is what Project Impact is about – doing what may seem to be inconsequential to bring about a greater good, the true impact.

Montour is overjoyed at what they were able to accomplish. “Our purpose was to move furniture,” she said, “but our long-term impact was the motivation.”

By: Charles Metz