Volunteer
March 8, 2012
Goshen community members raise roof on Mayorga home
Students, faculty and staff showed their support of community member Eddie Mayorga over spring break by lending a hand in the construction of his new home. In spite of chilly weather and rock-hard ground, over a dozen members of the Goshen community stopped by the building site on Wednesday morning to assist in raising the roof. Over the past several months, Goshen has been raising funds to make Mayorga’s dream of owning a house become a reality. Events including a basketball game, Kick-Off and an AVI Fresh brunch helped to raise awareness and funds. Last week it was time to...
February 23, 2012
Building a blessing
Last Friday 25 student volunteers gathered in the Union to build walls for the future home of Eddie Mayorga, a local resident and Goshen College employee. Goshen College, partnering with Habitat for Humanity, will offer more opportunities for students to help with the project in the coming weeks. Campus Activities Council and Habitat for Humanity members urged students to sign blessings and names with markers to the wall as a sort of blessing for the Mayorga family. Isaac Fast, a sophomore, helped organize this special day for Mayorga and his family. Over the past few months, Fast and the CAC have...
January 26, 2012
Ground broken at Mayorga’s Habitat site
Eddie Mayorga smiled as he held soil up on his golden shovelhead for a photo. Earlier, laughs were heard as some Goshen College representatives struggled to pierce the ground. On Tuesday, a group of about 25 gathered for the ground breaking of Moyarga’s Habitat for Humanity home site. The event included sharing from Tom McCarther, executive director of Habitat for Humanity, and Bill Born, vice president for student life, as well as a benediction from Goshen President Jim Brenneman. Mayorga also spoke, thanking Habitat for Humanity and Goshen College for their support. Originally from Puerto Barrios, Guatemala, Mayorga lived in Los...
January 19, 2012
Goshen aids Habitat project
Goshen College has teamed up with Habitat for Humanity to help build a house for Eddie Mayorga, a Goshen College Physical Plant employee. Habitat for Humanity has been helping people own their own homes and find affordable housing since 1976, when the organization was founded. In exchange for Habitat for Humanity building him a house, Mayorga was responsible for putting in some sweat equity, which meant volunteering on other Habitat for Humanity projects. Mayorga will also be responsible for putting in work on the construction of his own house. When all the construction is done, Habitat for Humanity will set...
November 30, 2011
Help one of our own get their home, sweet home
This may not be your traditional Mennonite “barn-raising.” Goshen College agreed to help Habitat for Humanity, a non-profit organization that helps build affordable, decent housing for its homeowner partner families, build a house for one of our employees. Although Habitat for Humanity usually works to raise money for builds with federal loans and donations but recent changes in federal policy have left a $25,000 gap in funds for materials to build Eddie Mayorga’s house. Since Mayorga and his family had completed most of the 500 volunteer hours required of homeowner partner families, Habitat decided to continue with the scheduled build...
November 2, 2011
Two students start deaf summer camp
Before this summer, the small South Pacific island of Guam was home to roughly 200,000 people, an abundance of brown tree snakes, and a vast coral reef ecosystem. It did lack one thing, though: a deaf camp for kids. Goshen College students Heather Zimmerman and Naomi Webster saw this void in Guam’s deaf community and decided to fill it. Zimmerman, a recent Goshen College graduate, had wanted to create and organize a deaf camp for several years but didn’t have the resources until last May. It wasn’t until Zimmerman combined her vision with Webster’s organizational skills and the support of...
October 5, 2011
Blood drive on Friday
The American Red Cross will be in the Union Gym on Friday for their biannual blood drive. Even if you haven't signed up, anyone is welcome to come between 10:30 a.m. and 4:3o p.m. to give blood. According to the Red Cross website, their blood supply is low due to extreme weather, which disrupted blood collections. To be eligible to give blood a person must weigh over 110 pounds and must not have lived in a country with malaria for 12 months. To check out your eligibility go to http://www.redcrossblood.org/donating-blood/eligibility-requirements/eligibility-criteria-topic.
September 28, 2011
GC students serve at Iona Community
Most people cannot say they spent their summer working in a kitchen on an island off of Scotland, but Emily Hedrick and Stephanie Hollenberg can. Banoffi pie, ratatouille and apple curry soup were just a few of the numerous dishes that Hedrick, a junior, and Hollenberg, a senior, helped prepare while serving as volunteers on the rocky isle of Iona this summer. Both women worked eight hours a day, five to six days a week, cooking for 70 or more guests on the island. “We worked hard, crying as we chopped mounds of onions and sweating as we washed mounds...
September 21, 2011
Students demonstrate servant leadership
This Wednesday marks the 13th year Goshen College students leave classes behind and head into the surrounding community to serve. However, this year is the first year the college didn’t cancel all of Wednesday’s classes for the service day. Instead only first-year classes were canceled, so colloquium classes could serve. The change comes as a result of previous Celebrate Service Days. Bill Born, vice president of student life, explains that the cut was done because of management issues. “It was an issue of getting numbers and the issues with traveling to the organizations,” said Born. This change left a group...
September 14, 2011
Kennard Martin, “Leader of Service”
Every winter morning in 1976, a Goshen College student woke up at 5:30 a.m. to make doughnuts for the cafeteria. As he made his way to work, Kennard Martin was already on the job, plowing the sidewalks to make the student’s walk easier. That student’s name was Jim Brenneman. Little did either know that 35 years later Brenneman would be president of the college and designate the 2011-2012 academic year the “Year of Kennard Martin, Leader of Service at Goshen College.” “I never imagined that Kennard would still be here so many years later to welcome me back and get...
April 7, 2011
Coast-to-coast with two wheels and a hammer
The distance: 3600 miles. The time span: nine weeks. The mode of transportation: a bicycle. Look out United States, because Anne Troyer will be bicycling through your mountains, through your heartland, from coast to coast. Troyer, a junior, along with 20 other full-time riders, will be bicycling from Seattle to Washington, D.C. as part of the Fuller Center’s Bike Adventure fundraiser. “The Fuller Center is like Habitat for Humanity and builds homes on a mission to eliminate poverty housing,” said Troyer. Every year the center organizes a bike trip, and this year’s trip is the longest. The center will support...
April 7, 2011
Students continue fundraising for Japan
Yumi Otsuka, a first-year Japanese student, first heard on Facebook about the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that occurred in her home country three weeks ago. “I had extra time, so I was on Facebook,” she said. “At first I was thinking that this could not be true, because we have many earthquakes in Japan and oftentimes they are no big deal. When I found out it had a magnitude of 9.1, I was shocked,” Otsuka said. She was worried about the Japanese people, but after emailing her dad, she said, “I knew my parents, other family members, and friends were...
April 7, 2011
Red Cross blood drive coming to GC on Friday
In the five minutes the average Goshen College student spends attempting to connect to the Internet in the Good Library each day, 150 people across the United States require a blood transfusion. That's one person every two seconds. Fortunately, Goshen College is teaming up with the American Red Cross for the second time this school year to host a blood drive this Friday, April 8. Goshen College has hosted Red Cross blood drives for the past several years. Doug Yoder, head track coach and coordinator of the blood drive, said that college students are particularly ideal candidates for blood donors....
February 17, 2011
Students volunteer in tax return program
This spring, Goshen accounting students will prepare tax return forms for free for low-income residents in Elkhart county. The nine students in Professor Michelle Horning's tax class are all required to participate in the IRS's Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program. Through this nation-wide program, they have gone through IRS training, passed an exam and learned how to use the IRS software. Horning has been incorporating this project into her tax class for the past 10 years. The Tax Assistance program targets people with low incomes who wouldn't normally be able to afford paid preparers. These people usually qualify for a...
February 10, 2011
ABC’s “Secret Millionaire” targets alumni’s organization
Volunteers and students at Urban Faith Works, a small non-profit organization in Gary, IN, received quite the surprise when a ‘documentary’ film crew revealed the truth about their reason for filming there. The crew was actually part of the new ABC reality show Secret Millionaire. The premise of the show is that a millionaire goes undercover to various organizations that operate in underprivileged areas in the US. By the end of the week, according to the show’s website, the millionaire reveals their identity and donates “hundreds of thousands of dollars of their own money” to the organization. When the...