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Wesleyan WOWs Macon with its community-wide service event
Wesleyan College organized more than one hundred volunteers through its recent WOW! A Day for Macon community-wide service event and completed multiple projects simultaneously at a dozen separate work sites throughout the city of Macon, Georgia.
Wesleyan’s Lane Center for Community Engagement & Service coordinated students, faculty, staff, and community volunteers in the mass effort. The volunteers gathered in the College’s historic Anderson Dining Hall for breakfast and received their assignments before setting off to complete various community projects with participating nonprofit organizations.
Local community sites benefiting from the event included Habitat for Humanity, Aunt Maggie’s Kitchen Table, Methodist Home for Children and Youth, Magnolia Manor, Georgia Industrial Children’s Home, Wesley Glen, Crisis Line & Safe House of Central Georgia, Goodwill Industries, and Loaves and Fishes. Chores included cleaning, painting, landscaping, sorting clothes, creating autumn wreaths, and other jobs at the host sites.
“With much pre-planning, we are able to tackle a few major projects for several organizations in one Saturday -- things that our partner agencies really don’t have the staff or time to get done,” said Lane Center Director Rhonda Green-Barnes. “Basically, we all head out willing to do whatever we have to do: cleaning, scrubbing, yard work, painting, and other chores. Whatever it takes.”
WOW! A Day for Macon is an integral part of Wesleyan’s goal to promote service-based learning among its students while building upon Wesleyan’s mission to be “first for women’s education—striving for excellence, grounded in faith and engaged in service to the world.” Twice yearly, the Lane Center coordinates the mass-volunteer service effort.
Service can’t be limited to the efforts of a single day, but the accomplishments of WOW! projects provide an enriching introduction to the power of engagement, inspiring many students to make longer-term commitments. Although service is not a requirement at Wesleyan, two-thirds of the students remain actively engaged in the community through Lane Center initiatives at dozens of local agencies throughout their college careers.
Pictured above: Wesleyan students, staff, and faculty worked in the children's garden at Aunt Maggie's Kitchen Table. Pictured to right: During a recent WOW! A Day for Macon community service event, Wesleyan students sorted donated clothing at Goodwill Industries, worked on the foundation of a new house with Habitat for Humanity, and performed lots of deep cleaning at Aunt Maggie’s Kitchen Table and the Georgia Industrial Children’s Home. |
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