Several Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College (SMWC) students spent their fall break, Oct. 10-16, in Knoxville, Tennessee. But they weren’t vacationing in the mountains all week – they were serving the city’s unhoused.
The opportunity was one of SMWC’s twice-a-year alternative break trips, led by Campus Ministry. Both fall and spring alternative break trips allow students to serve people in need in different areas. This fall, eight students worked with three nonprofit organizations, Volunteer Ministries of Knoxville, Metropolitan Drug Coalition of Knoxville and Ladies of Charity Knoxville, where they assembled Narcan kits, deep-cleaned a kitchen and distributed food to those in need.
“I have been to Knoxville twice now. Both trips were incredibly rewarding. That much is for certain,” said Kyleigh Moore, a sophomore Kindergarten-Grade 6/Mild Intervention Education major from Terre Haute, who has been on three alternative break trips as a student. “This trip stood out, however, because of how much more personal we were able to get with the people we were helping. Talking to people and getting to know their stories was my favorite part of the experience.”
The group spent their first day traveling before they had a free day on Sunday. They visited the Knoxville Zoo and the local arts district before service began on Monday with deep cleaning at a soup kitchen.
“This trip was amazing in so many ways. The students were privileged to an up-close, personal experience that demonstrated clearly that homelessness is more than a word we use in the abstract,” said Tim Tesmer, campus minister and trip chaperone. “It represents real people, with real needs, real fears, and real frustrations. If there is anything we took away from this trip, I hope it is the profound understanding that people are people whether they live in a palace or under a bridge.”
On Tuesday, they served at the Ladies For Charity Thrift Store, where they sorted clothes into bins, hung clothes on the clothing racks, and dressed mannequins. Another group sorted jewelry, helped at the register and set up jewelry displays.
After their day of service, the students returned to their Airbnb, where they had dinner, read devotionals and cleaned. On Tuesday night, they assembled goody bags with candy, chocolate chip cookies and handwritten cards with jokes, inspirational quotes, and drawings to hand out while working with the Drug Coalition on Wednesday.
“That day, we visited the bridge where a large population of homeless folks live and distributed the goody bags we made to everyone down there and made conversation with them,” Moore said. “I got to talk to a woman when we were handing out goody bags who had recently lost her son and was struggling to pay for his cremation. She had lost both her legs due to diabetes, and she was caring for herself, plus two dogs, under the bridge. She was so grateful for the treats, even though she could not enjoy them. She said the intention and gesture were what mattered. She was such a strong person, and I admired her strength.”
On Thursday, the students split up. Moore went to Ladies For Charity Knoxville to continue her work from earlier in the week, while the other SMWC students returned to the Drug Coalition to put together Narcan bags. After they were finished, the group traveled back to Indiana.
“My biggest takeaway from this trip was that small actions go a long way,” Moore said. “You can never know how much something that seems small to you could mean to someone else.”
In March, students will travel to Charleston, S.C., to serve during alternative spring break.