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Notre Dame Traditions—Service Projects
At no other University is tradition more important than at Notre Dame. With “Notre Dame Traditions,” we want to uncover the most cherished traditions of our readers. In the last issue of ND Today, we asked readers to share their memories about the most rewarding service project in which they participated while a student at ND. Here are a few of our favorites:
By far the most memorable service project that I was involved with at Notre Dame was the adopt-a-grandparent program. While I no longer remember what group on campus sponsored this program, the effects of it were long lasting for me. In 1978, I was matched up with a woman named Lucille, who had previously worked as a maid in the dorms at Notre Dame, had outlived at least two husbands, and lived by herself in a house in South Bend. Two or three times a month, I rode the bus to Lucille's house and just spent time with her—talking to her about her life, her family, and about Notre Dame. After my graduation in 1979, I kept in contact with Lucille. We wrote, I visited her on my infrequent trips to South Bend, and we sometimes talked on the phone. After I got married, I introduced my husband to Lucille, and in 2000, when my family spent a few days at Notre Dame Family Hall, my five children met Lucille for the first time, too. Every Christmas, without fail, I received a note handwritten by her on lined paper, telling me about her daughters and her grandchildren, her health concerns, and her volunteer activities—until Christmas a year ago, when instead of a note from Lucille, I received a phone call on December 29 from one of her granddaughters, telling me that Lucille had died on December 26, 2007. Being matched with Lucille in the adopt-a-grandparent program was a service project that grew into a friendship spanning nearly 30 years! - Judy (Cole) Manza, ’79
I helped start and work with a group of ND alumni board members in South Bend on an rural communications project in war torn northern Uganda. The goal of the project is to connect Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps in northern Uganda to Internet services using solar powered computers. In a little over a year since deploying our network in nine sites around Gulu, Uganda, we have seen Ugandan users living in IDP camps, with no previous access to the outside world, become their own advocates and share their stories with volunteer collaborators online using our wikispace site (bosco-uganda.wikispaces.com). We are soon expanding the network into other war affected districts in the north and hope to launch new concepts of use for our network by connecting schools, local governments, and human rights volunteers to a valuable communication and collaboration network. My first exposure to this project, before it had really begun, was a little over two years ago when I met the founder, a 1980 ND alumnus on an airplane to Uganda. I was going to Uganda at that time to teach in a volunteer service placement with a Holy Cross school through the Center for Social Concerns. One conversation later, my attention was focused on the problems in northern Uganda and I began my involvement with the South Bend Board of Directors. After graduation in 2008, I fundraised almost $30,000 to support my placement here in Gulu full time and hope to continue the work started by dedicated ND alums in the years to come. -Kevin Bailey ’08
Between my junior and senior years at Notre Dame, I was awarded $1,000 through CILA [Community for the International Lay Apostolate, a Notre Dame student organization that facilitated service opportunities in Latin America] to spend six weeks with "Los Ninos" in San Ysidro, Calif. A pre-med native of Boston with a second major in Spanish, I was anxious to use my language skills and work across the border in one of Tijuana's most impoverished neighborhoods. Daily we commuted to an area of Tijuana where people scavenged the city dump adjacent to their shantytown and tried to teach their children rudimentary math and reading skills. In the afternoons we visited the jail and orphanages. I think it was the best thing I've ever done, not just in college. I wound up in southern California as an emergency doctor (with Spanish as a second language) because of my Notre Dame education. -Mary Kaye (Burke) Ashkenaze ’84 |