Students Fly Overseas to Serve this Summer
Fourteen Westmont students will be spending at least a month this summer serving communities around the globe as part of Emmaus Road, a Westmont program that has been sending students overseas for 12 years. Five students will be in the Dominican Republic and Haiti from May 23 to June 21, working with Building Homes Building Hope, assisting in medical clinics, participating in home improvement projects, working alongside local churches and planting fruit trees. This is the first time Emmaus Road has sent students to this region, which was devastated by a 7.0 earthquake in January.
Five students will be serving in China June 21 to July 22 with I Care Community, volunteering in an orphanage in Qingdao, building relationships with mentally and physically disabled children through sports, music and art.
Five students will be in Kenya June 28 to Aug. 5 volunteering with the Evelyn Memorial Foundation through Rainbows of Hope. This team will be reaching out to homeless children by volunteering at a drop in center and an orphanage that are connected with a church and school in Naivasha.
“Emmaus Road provides opportunities for students to grow and develop into globally-minded men and women intellectually and experientially equipped for Christ-like servant-leadership in a physically and spiritually impoverished world,” says Jeremy Fletcher, coordinator of student ministries and missions.
Emmaus Road participants are responsible for raising the funds for the service projects, which cost about $2,900 per student.
The three Emmaus Road trips aren’t the only service programs Westmont students are involved with this summer. The 19 members of the women’s soccer team are in Uganda May 10-24, working with the Sports Outreach Institute (SOI) at rehabilitation institutes for young children, running soccer clinics and working at a farm in Gulu.
A group of 19 students and a couple of faculty members are on a new Mayterm course (May 10 to June 11), “Faith, Justice and Globalization: Human Trafficking,” that takes the group to Thailand and Cambodia. Due to the political crisis in Bangkok, the group has been staying in Pattaya, about 100 miles southeast of Bankok on the Gulf of Thailand. Pattaya, known around the world as Thailand’s top sun, sea and sex destination, is home to at least 20,000 male, female and child prostitutes. As the students seek to find a solution to the sex slave industry, they have visited with a Westmont alumna who works at Tamar Center, which offers hope, help and jobs to women in the greeting card-making program, hairdressing salon, bakery and coffee shop.