From New Orleans-
Episcopal Campus Ministry (ECM) at the University of New Orleans (UNO)
Adrian Madriz, the Episcopal Campus Ministry Coordinator, told me the main objective as a religious group at the University of New Orleans is to get as many students involved in community service as possible and to promote sustainable community development. According to Adrian, many students have benefited from ECM's presence: from the students who they provide a free lunch to every week, to the students who found platforms on which to become engaged in the community through ECM's various service initiatives, and to the students who come to ECM and find a listening ear at all hours of the day.
ECM and its student volunteers have been involved in projects such as building houses with Habitat for Humanity, maintaining community gardens, feeding the homeless at the New Orleans Mission, preparing food for Second Harvest, tutoring young children at the All Souls Community Center, canvassing with the Orleans Public Education Network, and helping countless schools in the area with various maintenance tasks.
Here's Adrian's response to my question about the partying aspects of college student life: "We address the partying life in the sense that partying excessively can be a distraction from their greater mission - we have to put others' needs before our own as much as humanly possible." This was followed by more of a blunt statement by Adrian: "Obviously one cannot credibly claim they are too busy for service work if they spend eight hours a week getting drunk." He went on to say, "We try to advocate an awareness of the utility of one's time and that time spent doing selfish acts is time taken away from selfless works."
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