What you can do now:

The local Red Cross office has been flooded with phone calls and has set up a disaster relief phone line to handle the calls. They need two volunteers from 8:30am-4:30pm this week to handle those calls. They also need volunteers to help at community blood drives that had already been scheduled and are expecting lots of donors.

Please contact EV! at x7250 or in Moseley 230 to sign up for a volunteer shift. Also, continue to check e-net for updated information about other volunteer needs. Thank you for your willingness to help those in need.

This is the fifth year Elon has hosted this conference, which brings together faculty and staff from throughout the state to discuss service-learning as a powerful form of experiential education. More than 120 faculty and staff from 24 institutions are planning to attend, including several Elon faculty. Elon professor Jane Stephens is leading a workshop titled “To Be of Use: Content, Choice, and Community in Service-Learning Courses,” and Elon sophomore Darris Means is part of the keynote panel for the lunch program.

The hub office for North Carolina Campus Compact is located at 51±¬ÁÏÍø, in Alamance 109B. John Barnhill is Executive Director of NCCC.

“The Oxfam Hunger Banquet is one of the most popular Fast for a World Harvest activities, engaging participants in a dramatization of the unequal distribution of resources and wealth in the world.

“Each guest draws a ticket randomly assigning them to the high-, middle- or low-income tier and is served a corresponding meal. The 15 percent in the high-income tier are served a sumptuous gourmet meal. The 30 percent in the middle-income section eat a simple meal of rice and beans. The majority 55 percent in the low-income tier waits in line for small portions of rice and water.

“The Oxfam Hunger Banquet is a powerful tool that brings to life the inequalities in our world and challenges us, as the more economically fortunate, to realize how our decisions affect others in the world. Few leave a Hunger Banquet with full stomachs, but all leave filled with a greater understanding of the problems of global hunger and poverty and the motivation to do something about it.”

Elon students Myra St. Clair and Alicia Cambria are the coordinators of Hunger Awareness Week, and they have been assisted by many other student volunteers. The Nov. 18 event generated more than $75 in donations for local organizations that deal with hunger. Other events during this week include volunteering at Caring Kitchens (a soup kitchen in Burlington), a 30-hour famine (scheduled this Friday and Saturday, Nov. 21-22), and a “donate-a-meal” campaign.  Aramark has pledged to donate $1,500 to Oxfam to support students donating meals for this event.  Aramark also donated the food for the Oxfam Hunger Banquet.

Anyone interested in participating in these activities, or other service events coordinated by Elon Volunteers!, can contact the EV! office in Moseley 230 or x7250.

For this course, we spend the first week in Antigua – a beautiful colonial-style city where we’ll go on lots of field trips, meet representatives from various social justice / human rights organizations, and learn Spanish. And watch volcanoes erupt – from a safe distance. For the next two weeks, we work alongside local Guatemalan families to build decent affordable housing which will help to improve their health, their economic situations, and their lives. In our free time, we’ll go swimming in hot springs and spend a few days on Lake Atitlan – a gorgeous lake surrounded by volcanoes. This trip is amazing – we spend a lot of time getting to know not only the issues affecting the country and the local people, but actually getting to know the local people as Habitat partners and as friends. (And the kids on the work site are adorable!)

You do not need construction experience or Spanish skills to participate in this course.

To apply for this course, go to the Study Abroad office on the first floor of Carlton. The cost of the course is $2775, which includes almost ALL of your expenses (meals, airfare, Habitat fees, etc). Most participants only spend about $75-100 once we get to Guatemala – just whatever you want to spend for souvenirs. If you want more information about the trip, contact me (kmanning@elon.edu or stop by Moseley 230) or Jim Pickens (pickens@elon.edu or Alamance 307C). We would love to tell you more about it and show you pictures. Jim also has some pictures from last year on his web site at www.elon.edu/pickens/guate03 if you want to check it out.

For this winter term class, we spend the first week in Antigua – a beautiful city where we’ll go on lots of field trips, meet representatives from social justice / human rights organizations, and learn some Spanish. And watch volcanoes erupt – from a safe distance. For the next two weeks, we work alongside local Guatemalan families to build decent affordable housing which will help to improve their health, their economic situations, and their lives. In our free time, we’ll go swimming in hot springs and spend a few days on Lake Atitlan – a gorgeous lake surrounded by volcanoes. This trip is amazing – last year’s participants can vouch for what an incredible experience this was. We spend a lot of time getting to know not only the issues affecting the country and the local people, but actually getting to know the local people as Habitat partners and as friends.

You do not need construction experience or Spanish skills to participate.

To apply for this course, go to the Study Abroad office on the first floor of Carlton. The cost of the course is $2775, which includes almost ALL of your expenses (meals, airfare, Habitat fees, etc). Most participants only spend about $75-100 once we get to Guatemala. If you want more information, contact Kathy Manning (kmanning@elon.edu or stop by Moseley 230) or Jim Pickens (pickens@elon.edu or Alamance 307C). Check out some of last year’s pictures on the web site listed below.

Hope you can join us for this amazing adventure!