FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 3/26/07

Greenville College Students Return from New Orleans Relief

GREENVILLE, ILL. – A team of eleven Greenville College students and two staff members spent March 11-17 on the school’s third relief mission to hurricane-ravaged New Orleans. The group collaborated with Urban Impact Ministries to gut damaged houses still untouched since Hurricane Katrina hit the area in 2005.

Split into two groups, the members spent four days demolishing walls and ceilings inside damaged homes. Their fifth day was spent with volunteers from a local church clearing trash from streets and doing yard work.

Though there was plenty of work to be done, the team’s emphasis was placed on the people, not the projects. Stephanie DeMott, a senior Art major, explains, “We were there to do manual labor and to get people back into their houses, but [the trip] was, above all, about the people…that we interacted with.”

The office of World Outreach and Missions organizes outreach opportunities like the New Orleans trip for students to participate in. Encouraged by the group’s commitment, Hehman stated, “Right from the beginning they took on a great sense of responsibility for their actions and each other,” The group faithfully met for pre-field training, raised funds for the trip and remained open to whatever needed to be done once in New Orleans. “Upon their return it was evident that this group of students had their worldview expanded and it now included a theology of the city, a heart for those in need and a perspective that paid attention to the world far beyond their dorm rooms,” said Hehman.

Urban Impact Ministries has been serving at-risk youth and their families in the Central City of New Orleans since 1989. UIM exists to transform the Central City of New Orleans through Spiritual Development, Christian Community Development and Strategic Partnerships.

Greenville College is a four-year accredited Christian liberal arts school with more than 1450 traditional undergraduate, graduate, and adult degree completion students. Founded in 1892 and affiliated with the Free Methodist Church, the college is located in Greenville, Illinois, 45 miles east of St. Louis.