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College reunion targets repairing communities
By CHAUNDRA PERKINS ST. PETERSBURG -- As part of a college alumni group, members of the Grant family travel from their home in Indianapolis to some distant city every two years for a week of community service. This year they came to the Happy Workers Children's Center at 920 19th St. S. Kim and Bill Grant, along with their children Tommy and Michelle, spent the week doing repairs to the children's center. They belong to A.I.M., or Alumni in Mission, a group of DePauw University alumni who travel around the country with their families doing volunteer work. In 2000 they were in Gallup, N.M., on a Navajo Reservation. Tommy Grant, 15, said, "It was really fun meeting different people." "Most people don't get to do stuff like this," he said of roofing houses and repairing old buildings. Michelle, 19, said, "It's fun ... at the end to see what you've done, what you've accomplished." At age 13 she laid a linoleum floor in a family's kitchen. In 1976, when chaplain Fred Lamar took a group of Depauw students to Guatemala after an earthquake for his Winter Term in Mission, he planted a seed. "He got through to us," said Kim Grant. As alumni they decided against the typical reunion and called on their old chaplain. Lamar, who retired to St. Petersburg, said they told him they wanted to continue what they started 15 years earlier. "The students have grown up to be deeply committed to community," he said. So began the A.I.M. program. The first year, 1992, they worked in Indianapolis building a playground in the inner city. In 1994 they offered relief to victims of Hurricane Hugo in Raleigh, N.C. This year they are offering a hand to Happy Workers Children's Center. Claudia Decker, business manager at Happy Workers, said A.I.M. has taken care of several ongoing problems. The group decided to complete four projects at the location. They built a wooden fence around electrical circuit boxes behind the building near the children's play area. They replaced a roof over a covered walkway. They built an imagination station (an outdoor theater). They built a toy shed. Decker said had the group not volunteered to do the work, those things would "certainly have been continued frustration." She said that since those repairs do not affect the everyday operation of the center, she would have had to search out grant money. A.I.M. eliminated that problem. Five families continue to participate in the program. At the end of each project they decide on the next and appoint a project officer to organize the endeavor. Lamar was aware of Happy Workers because he and his wife, Martha, had volunteered at the center. "We've found this to be a good agency and doing a wonderful job with the children, teaching them to be peacemakers," said Lamar. He described Happy Workers as "an agency that's worthwhile." "It really needs a little help," he said, "a little boost."
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From the Times South Pinellas desks Letters |
