Boston College students on a trip to Monongalia County, West Virginia, in 2018. (Photo: Courtesy of Kelly Hughes)
In the late 1970s, Gregg Cassin passed on a sunny spring-break sojourn to Cabo or Cancún. Instead, driven by the desire to help others, he and his Boston College friends piled into borrowed vans and set off for Kentucky. There, they volunteered with a group called Glenmary Home Missioners, lending a hand to people experiencing poverty in Appalachia.
“It was two funky vans and an incredible group of people,” said Cassin ’80. He could not have imagined that his impromptu service trip would eventually become Appalachian Volunteers (Appa for short), BC’s largest service-immersion program. Over four decades, Appa has sent thousands of students around the country during spring break to work with underprivileged populations in Appalachia and beyond, from restoring greenhouses in Virginia to building homes with Habitat for Humanity in New Jersey.
An Appa gathering in 1981. (Photo: Adair Luhr Kearney ’82)
Today, 450 or so students volunteer each year at thirty-two locations across the country. That presents a logistical puzzle for the Office of Campus Ministry, which oversees the program, and a twelve-person student council. Between booking buses and flights, raising the needed $100,000, and teaching students how to listen and respond when they inevitably witness hardship, planning Appa is a months-long endeavor. It starts in July and ends in March, when students head into the field. At that point, Kelly Hughes, the campus minister for Appa, and Ryan Heffernan, the associate director for Campus Ministry, act as air traffic control. “We stay back to monitor who is leaving, who is coming, who has landed, whose bus is delayed,” Heffernan said. Or “who is stuck in a ditch,” Hughes added, with a laugh.
What sets Appa apart from other service programs is the degree to which it is organized by students. “I’m just at the back of the ship, helping them to stay on track,” Hughes said. At the helm this year are student council cochairs Ryan Baranko ’20, responsible for transportation; Sophia Fox ’20, who led fundraising efforts; and Hailey Kobza ’20, who organized biweekly educational meetings for volunteers.
Baranko helped select this year’s volunteer locations (his group is going to Ohio). He began over the summer by calling scores of potential sites, including forty-five where BC students have worked previously. Securing the locations is “kind of like finding the perfect date,” he said. “Each site is different, with a unique perspective. Some fit better than others.” After confirming the community partners, he turned to housing—students usually bunk in church basements or Boys & Girls Clubs. Then came the travel arrangements. “We had to figure out how to get from point A to point B” via flights, rented vans, and coach buses, Baranko said.
BC students work on a Habitat for Humanity site in Sumter, South Carolina, in 2018. (Photo: Amanda Bolaños ’18)
With the plans in place, it was time to tag in Fox and her team, who were tasked with raising the funds to pay for everything. That involved making fliers and selling reusable water bottles and flannels purchased from thrift stores. To participate, each volunteer must raise $300, which primarily involves soliciting donations by mail.
Meanwhile, Kobza and her crew met with volunteers every other Sunday from October to March to familiarize them with the challenges they’ll encounter onsite. This year, Kobza’s curriculum featured discussions about rural and urban poverty, environmental injustice, health care, and diversity and inclusion. “We really don’t want people to go into these trips blind,” she said. “You run the risk of saying things you might not mean because you are uninformed.”
Being on the Appa council can feel all-consuming at times: The students attend weekly leadership meetings, subcommittee get-togethers, and the biweekly Sunday learning sessions, all while managing schoolwork and, for some, working part-time jobs. “When I go to bed at night I’m thinking of Appa. When I wake up in the morning I’m thinking of Appa. I have dreams about Google docs and Google slides,” Fox said. “This is not paid. You’re doing it because you believe in the program and its amazingly motivated people.”
All that planning shows, said Dot Harris, a volunteer with Gloucester County Habitat for Humanity in New Jersey. “We’ve had a great experience with Boston College kids coming,” she said. “It energizes our volunteers and makes a big impact.” Anthony Isabella, the executive director at the site, said he gets requests from other colleges to come down, but he’ll accept volunteers only from BC. “There is no doubt in my mind these guys know what they’re doing,” he said.
As for Cassin, he’s proud that his long-ago service trip has inspired so many other Appa participants. “I care that it is something people feel is important,” he said. “By an accident of the universe and the work of smart people, it still exists.”
Jacqueline Tempera | Boston College Magazine
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