Spring Break is for Service:  32 Students Repair Hurricane-Damaged Homes

While spring break is a popular time for families, youth groups, and college students to head south and focus on playing and tanning on a beach, an increasing number are focusing on something quite different: serving disaster survivors through the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee (CRWRC).

It has been a busy year for CRWRC’s Disaster Response Services, with a high number of tornadoes, floods, and other natural disasters hitting communities across North America. As a result, there were many opportunities to serve this spring break season. From early March to the first week of April, 35 DRS groups and 800 volunteers from across the United States and Canada worked in more than a dozen disaster-affected communities. Tasks ranged from cleanup to highly-skilled construction projects.

Some groups had over 70 members, while others were much smaller. One group was made up of only a teacher and her husband who served in an area of northeast Alabama that was devastated by tornadoes last spring. At the same time, seven University and College groups served in places like Biloxi, Miss. (still recovering from Hurricane Katrina), and Swan Quarter, N. Carolina (hit by Hurricane Irene last August).

The choir from Rehoboth Christian School in New Mexico toured much of the United States during their spring break. They included the tornado-stricken community of Joplin, Missouri, as one of their stops, and lifted the community’s spirits through volunteer service and a concert. The leader described the diverse crowd as “a little taste of heaven” and said that the experience "opened the eyes of our students to urban poverty.”

In the first week of April, CRWRC-DRS broke a new record by having 22 groups and over 500 volunteers at work during the same week.

Volunteer work groups are an increasingly vital part of CRWRC-DRS and now represent nearly one-half of the total volunteer hours donated each year. The winter months tend to draw adult groups with specialized skills, while spring break typically brings in younger groups.

Youth volunteers typically have a special passion for cultivating relationships both within their group and with disaster-affected community members. For CRWRC-DRS, relationship-building is considered as vital as physical work. Group members are encouraged to take time to put their hammers down and spend time listening to, encouraging, and learning from those they meet.

“While we often talk of our volunteers being the ‘hands and feet’ of Christ, we believe we may also be called upon to be His eyes, ears, and voice,” says Art Opperwall, the DRS groups manager.

The CRWRC-DRS Groups Program has opportunities for all kinds of groups every week of the year. For more information, contact Art or Kellie at 800-848-5818 or [email protected].

CRWRC works in North America and in 40 developing countries, reaching out with help and hope to more than 1.6 million people in 4,000 communities through programs in agriculture, health, income earning, literacy, good governance, leadership development, and disaster response, alongside 84 national Christian churches and partner organizations.

~by Beth DeGraff, CRWRC Communications