Students Spend Winter Break Working in Hartford
Just as the novelty
of being at home for winter break began to wane, 14 Trinity students
returned early to campus to spend their days painting houses in
Hartford’s North End, living off a food-stamps budget, shopping at
Mega Foods, and cooking and living in a communal atmosphere. At
first glance it may not seem like an enticing deal—giving up the
comfort of home-cooked meals for a one-dollar lunch budget—but
participants in the Chapel Council’s Jelloh (January Experience of
Living and Learning and Outreach in Hartford) program found the week
of service to be both rewarding and humbling.
Rising early for
morning prayer and Bible study, led by College Chaplain Dan
Heischman, the group then headed off to the work sites, priming
walls at Habitat for Humanity houses and painting rooms at the
Catholic Worker, a non-profit organization “working and praying for
an end to violence and poverty” in the North End. Although the work
was physically strenuous at times, particularly with the low amount
of calorie intake from their shoe-string food allowance, Jim Bixby
’08, president of the Council, recalls that the “least fun job” was
hauling the mud out of the basement of the Habitat house. Yet
feeling part of a greater picture and mission, Bixby and the others
saw these homes not just as roofs over heads, but that
“homeownership reduces poverty rates and increases the likelihood
that kids will stay in school.”
In the evening, a
group of students would travel down to Mega Foods, the local
international market, to gather the groceries for the group. The
neighborhood grocer, explains Bixby, “was an event in itself. There
were things like chicken beaks and a common tag was ‘miscellaneous
meat.’” But it was an important component of the Jelloh program to
get a taste of the neighborhoods in which they were working and to
face head on the harsh economic realities. “It was humbling at
first. It’s almost unimaginable to think that families live off it
[the food stamps allowance]. We had to be creative with our meals,
but we made it stretch,” explains Bixby of the dinners that ranged
from pasta to tacos to stir fry.
Living together,
although men and women were split into separate campus houses, the
group was able to build a community and take time during evening
discussions to explore issues of faith and justice, explains Jim
Schroeder, adviser to campus Christian organizations and mentor on
the Jelloh program. “We were able to build a strong community among
ourselves with our discussions,” he says. “Our mission was not just
to serve but to learn.”
Sifting through
evaluation forms at the end of the week, Bixby was amazed at the
overwhelmingly positive responses. “The program was so fantastic,”
he says, “now we need to keep the ball rolling.” With a program
already in the works for Trinity Days, these students will once
again trade in their all-you-can-eat Mather buffet to lend their
time and efforts to a seemingly distant world that’s just right down
the road.
Story
contributed by Carlin Carr
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