Five Mountain Empire Community College students put their Spring Break to good use this year, participating in MECC’s first annual Alternative Spring Break service trip.
The team traveled to Greensboro, NC in the college-sponsored project and partnered with Habitat for Humanity to rehab an existing Habitat house. Over the course of five days, the team demoed the existing interior, tore down and replaced siding, and demoed and replaced the entire front porch.
The MECC students who participated had applied for the project in the fall, and worked with volunteers from Eastern University in Philadelphia, PA. Along the way, they picked up some valuable hands-on skills from the Habitat Greensboro professional construction crew.
“It was our first year, but I hope to make it an annual service project,” MECC Student Activities Coordinator Kari Paschetto told the Johnson City Times-News. “I knew the first time I saw them, this was the best team I could have asked for.”
The students agreed that they signed up for the program because they shared a common bond as college student government association members who wanted to give back something to their community.
“I feel like I don’t donate enough time, and I wanted to do something about it,” said Tanner Lawson, a math and chemistry major from Big Stone Gap.
“We’d thought about volunteering, and this was a chance to do something,” said Alex Haley, a senior business administration major from Pennington Gap.
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