Pacific Lutheran University

The school’s community garden is six years old and integrated into the curriculum for kindergarteners through sixth graders. The unique gardening method is based on Mel Bartholomew’s square-foot-gardening method, which grows vegetables in a four-by-four foot box. Crops are grown in one-by-one foot squares and produce a high yield, said Karen Marchesini, the school’s community liaison and director of the garden.

The school produces their own compost, and the gardening soil is extremely fertile. Last week, weeds had overtaken many of the garden boxes, and the PLU volunteers were helping to get them ready for spring planting.

“I usually work, but this week I was doing nothing so it was a good opportunity to volunteer,” Roberts said.

Roberts lives at her parent’s home in Tacoma, and decided to use the spring vacation as an opportunity to help others. In addition to working at the garden, she also helped with last Tuesday’s MESA Day, a math, science and engineering competition for elementary through high school students.

Krogh added that she usually doesn’t have time to volunteer when school is in session because she’s too busy with work, classes and homework. But during the weeklong long break, she had extra time and was happy to spend it working at the garden, she said.

“I loved the opportunity,” she said. “I wanted to be able to relax and get stuff done. This is a great event.”

Cleaning up the school’s community garden was one of three local service projects offered during spring break by Students Involvement and Leadership and the Center for Public Service. The daylong opportunities were part of a collection of service-oriented trips offered around the country through the collaboration between numerous campus offices.

The local opportunities helped to build bridges between the surrounding community and PLU, Barber said. For example, she hoped the garden project would create stronger connections between PLU and the local elementary schools, where PLU students volunteer as tutors. She pointed out that many students look for service projects in Tacoma and Seattle, but numerous opportunities exist right here in Parkland and Spanaway.

The other two local opportunities included working at Mother Earth Farms and on the Puget Creek Restoration Project. While the work party to the farm had to be canceled because of a lack of interest, SIL did take more than 30 international students from the Embassy Center for English Studies to help restore trails at Puget Creek.

The volunteers were joined by Starbuck’s employees in what Barber jokingly described as “slave labor.” The group re-graveled the creek’s trails, which required filling wheelbarrows full of gravel and pushing the heavy load up a large hill. They were also able to see the salmon habitat their hard work was helping to save, she said.

In addition to the volunteer opportunities here at home, more than 60 students embarked on five multi-day service-oriented trips around the country over spring vacation. They included:

• Eight students and two employees immersed themselves in the border culture at El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The group worked with the Iglesia Luterana Cristo Rey, a local Lutheran church that ministers to people on both sides of the border.
• Thirteen students and one employee spent the week building homes with Habitat for Humanity in Spokane and learned about the community services available to those living in the city.
• Thirteen students and one employee split their time between volunteering at Holden Village, a Christian center located in the Cascade Mountains near Chelan, Wash., and enjoying the outdoors.
• Fifteen students participated in Heifer International’s Global Village educational experience at the organization’s ranch in Perryville, Ark. The students worked with livestock and on the land during the day, and spent the evenings discussing sustainability, poverty and global hunger with the Heifer staff.
• Nine students and one employee spent four nights and five days living as homeless people on the streets of downtown Tacoma.

The service opportunities were all part of the first ever “Service Project Runaway: Alternative Spring Break Trips,” a collaborative effort by numerous offices across campus to provide students the opportunity to give back. The project was inspired by the huge response to Campus Ministry’s 2006 spring break trip to New Orleans to help victims of Hurricane Katrina. A larger program was developed this year to give students more opportunities.

It’s unclear whether the service-oriented trips will be offered regularly. Those offices that organized this year’s trips plan to use the experiences of the students to improve future trips, Barber said. Additionally, the offices learned they have to start the planning process earlier, as many students decide on spring break plans far in advance.

“People are hopeful that it will happen again. It was a nice collaboration between offices,” she said.

Campus offices involved in the planning process included: SIL, Campus Ministry, University Congregation, the Center for Public Service, the Volunteer Center, ASPLU, Outdoor Rec, the Diversity Center, GREAN, Catholic Campus Ministry, Residential Life and the Wang Center.