Service Day

Project

Description

American Red Cross of the Susquehanna Valley

Clean up: Students can help by washing and sweeping our vehicle fleet located at the Harrisburg office. You can also assist with cleaning up outside our building by sweeping curbs, sidewalks, etc.

Caitlin’s Smiles

Camp Hebron

Volunteers will be involved in various jobs around camp including housekeeping chores and outdoor work.

Community Outreach Events

We’ve begun a Community Out Reach Events program at our church in New Cumberland in order to have the neighborhood by our church become connected to our church family and each other as neighbors and friends. Were planning to introduce ourselves by giving each family/resident a spring flower with a note of information about our chuch and an invitation to 3 different block parties in the area. The parties will provide food and beverage and a time to socialize with neighbors. We need help to deliver the plants and notes. There are over 300 homes in the target area! Depending on how much help we have for the day, we also have some painting and cleaning at the church to be done.

Cumberland Vista

Cumberland Vista is a non-profit Christian-based personal care home for adults that are intellectually disabled. Students will be involved with window-washing, yard work, organization, and closet cleaning. Service projects like these allow us to stay in business by lowering administration costs.

Danzante has a long standing relationship with Messiah and many Messiah students have volunteered at the afterschool program. Danzante is an urban arts center offering art, music and dance classes as well as after school tutoring. This off campus service project will leave campus at 9:30am and arrive at Danzante in Harrisburg at 10am. We will leave the site at 2pm and return to campus by 2:30pm. Our service includes outdoor work digging and cleaning in the art garden, indoor organization projects and preparation for a fundraising event. We may hear some drumming and try out various Latino musical instruments. Our goals are to learn how Danzante is supporting the Latino community in Harrisburg and support these efforts.

Derry Presbyterian Church: Helping Hands in Hershey

Derry Presbyterian Church invites you to our fifth annual service day with Messiah College students. A variety of projects are available, including working outdoors to assist our G.O.D. Squad (Gardeners of Derry), assisting our hospitality coordinator in the kitchen, and polishing a large set of handbells used by our music program. Other office tasks may be available, depending on the size of the group. Lunch will be provided, as well as a goodie bag of Hershey products to thank you for going the extra mile and coming all the way to Hershey. Please dress in comfortable clothing and sneakers. Your efforts support the mission and ministry of Derry Church, where Christians have gathered for worship and service since 1724.

Earthkeepers: Adopt-a-Highway Cleanup

Earthkeepers will be hosting an Adopt-a-Highway cleanup for a section of Lisburn Road that the organization has been responsible for through the program. We will briefly discuss environmental stewardship in relationship to the Christian faith before heading out, and there may even be prizes for the most interesting piece of trash found!

Freedom Valley Church: Spring Outdoor Maintenance

We are a church. We are looking for help cleaning the outside of the church and spreading mulch, playground maintenance, possible power washing and painting. This is to prepare the church for Spring.

Hampden Elemetary: School Garden Mulching

Come join us for a fun day of mulching at a local elementary school garden! Hampden Elementary is about 20 minutes from Messiah (near Wendys, off the Carlisle Pike). The school garden exists to provide an outdoor space for classes and a hands-on environment for the 4th/5th grade Green Team (aka Environmental Club). The school garden space includes several perennial gardens and raised veggies gardens, which need to be prepped and mulched. The veggies are donated throughout the summer to Plant-A-Row-for-the-Hungry, a local ministry to Harrisburg shelters. Giving your time will enable the Hampden Green Team to give to others! Gardening tools, gloves and mulch will be provided. Wear garden-friendly clothing and bring water. School lunch and popsicles will be provided, along with the lively company of the Hampden Green Team children. Contact person is Cynthia Lehman, parent leader of the Green Team (and prof at Messiah College).

Harrisburg BIC Maintenance

We will be painting Sunday School classrooms and moving items into a storage area. If we have enough people and the weather is nice, we may do some weeding around the parking area.

Volunteers will be involved with raking leaves, picking up sticks, painting a small picket fence, and washing windows. This kind of manual labor helps in assisting elderly individuals who may not be able to accomplish these tasks themselves or afford to hire help.

Volunteers will be involved with planting, digging, composting, seeding, weeding, mowing, and cleaning up trash among other odd-jobs around the farm. Volunteers should be ready to engage in manual labor, be okay with getting muddy, and wear closed-toed shoes.

Morning Star Pregnancy Services: Baby Bottle Blessings

Volunteers will be assisting in packing, prepping, and moving baby bottles that will be used in a fundraiser for Morning Star Pregnancy.

Project Clean-Up: Pride of the Neighborhood

Volunteers will be involved with packing and labeling boxes as well as taking inventory of equipment in classrooms.

Recycle Bicycle: Recycle Bicycles!

Short version: Fix bikes and save lives in Jesus name. Long version: Goals: - Install brakes on any bike we encounter - Repair safety deficiencies on kids bikes - Teach bike repair to kids and adults - Supply bikes to those in need with a value incentive - To teach bike safety - To conserve resources by recycling as much as possible - To share the love of Christ Description (what does it do, how long, who are the primary audience for their work, etc) Recycle Bicycle’s audience is twofold: Adults (usually men) in halfway houses, homeless shelters, rehab facilities. Whether the cause is prison, drugs, economical, or DUI charges, these people don’t have vehicles. Recycle Bike gives them training and a form of transportation. By making these guys work for their bikes, they invest time and energy into a project and thus hold it at a higher value than if they were simply given these bikes. Kids are the main audience. Recycle Bicycle advocates bicycle safety for kids in Harrisburg, the most important of which is properly functioning brakes. By being able to fix any issues that kids may have with their bikes (adjustment issues, flat tires, broken parts) we are also able to repair any issues with brakes and ensure safety.

Sustainability Office: Cleaning out and preparing Sunflower Power garage:

Sweeping out and sealing the garage of the Foreman house (a.k.a. The Girls Restoration House). The garage has been given to the sunflower project to house the pressing procedure and now we need your help to get it to a place where we can press in it. The goal of the sunflower project is to offset the oil use on campus by growing our own sunflowers and pressing all 3,000 gallons ourselves and completing the sealing of the floor and walls we will move one step forward in the process.

Williams Grove Railroad (FULL)

Volunteers assisting the railroad crew at the Williams Grove Railroad will learn the basics of maintaining a railroad through first hand experience. This includes changing ties, fixing track, building track, adding ballast stone, and painting cars and other equipment.

Project

Description

Blue Mountain Outfitters

This is a fix up a river or river take-out sport project.

Carlisle Family YMCA New Frontier Camp

Volunteers will be involved with various construction projects around the camp.

This will be a time for all of our existing Collaboratory projects to continue with their work.

Dauphin County Parks and Recreation

Mulching the Towpath Trail The Towpath Trail is Wildwood Parks most popular trail. Soil has compacted and eroded away and exposed tree roots are a hazardous to trail users. Cover trail with mulch.

Deer Valley YMCA Family Camp

The project consists of various maintenance tasks around camp to prepare for the upcoming Spring and Summer camping seasons. Tasks may include raking leaves, building foot bridges, painting, and clearing brush. Other work has involved moving items in and out of storage, setting up for weekend events and data entry.

Doubling Gap Center/Camp YoliJwa

Volunteers will be involved in landscaping, outdoor service, and camping ministries.

The Service Day project at Harmony Bethel will involve general clean-up of the church property and grounds. It will include but may not be limited to the following: general clean-up outside of the church property (raking, picking up sticks etc) weeding of flower beds planting annuals spreading of mulch in flower beds and playground area inside clean-up (washing windows, cleaning doors and entry-ways, organization of storage areas) cleaning/washing the church bus cleaning church pavilion minor outdoor painting.

Lower Paxton Township Parks and Recreation: Landscaping

The Friendship Center is looking for anywhere between 10-20 volunteers to assist with weeding and mulching our gardens. Prep work will consist of weeding the gardens and clearing them of sticks and any kind of debris. We have a brush pile where all debris will be dumped. If time allows then we will begin mulching the gardens around the front of the Friendship Center. The purpose of landscaping around our building or any park is to promote a sense of welcoming, when a park is landscaped properly the environment becomes more inviting to the user. With the help of volunteers we can save nearly $600.00 in labor costs.

We will be making cards to send to Operation Write Home. Operation Write Home supports our troops by sending them cards to use to write to their loved ones and friends.

One of the five goals of the Outdoors Club is give service to Gods creation, so being good stewards on his earth, we plan to do a Yellow Breeches creek clean up. Participants will paddle down the creek by method of canoe and pick up trash along the way not only in front of campus but up and down stream. We plan to be cleaning up from mid morning to mid afternoon. This trip is always a lot of fun, so we would encourage you to sign up! Please show up with close toed shoes, water, and non cotton clothing is best.

Schaffner Youth Center: Murals

Volunteers will be creating and painting murals at our juvenile shelter.

Silence of Mary Home: Garden Preparation and Facility Repair/Upkeep

Painting the walls of two rooms in the downstairs of the 1413 Market Strert Home. Work to also include moving existing furniture as needed for painting. Preparing and seed planting for garden beds and painting and arranging existing garden boxes in the gardens around 1411 and 1413 Market Street homes. Repair and paint damaged sections of wooden fence in the yard and painting fence around existing trash bin.

This project is a joint session of Messiah College History Club, the Oakes Museum of Natural History, and Messiah Villages Pathways Institute for Lifelong Learning. The directors and contact people are Dr. David Pettegrew (Dept of History), Ken Mark (Director, Oakes Museum of Natural History), and students Katie Garland and Amanda Mylin (co-presidents of the History Club). Participants will include Messiah College history majors, volunteers associated with the Oakes Museum, and senior students connected with the Pathways Institute for Lifelong Learning. Work will occur at two locations: the Stouffer Farm located south of Dillsburg (www.stoufferfarm.wordpress.com) and a nearby cemetery of 18th century date. Participants will contribute to one or both of the following activities: One group of participants will meet at Stouffer Farm from 9:00 a.m. through 3:30 PM. Following a brief discussion about archaeological methods, the morning and early afternoon will be spent carrying out a small-scale excavation. Participants should be prepared to do light shoveling and troweling (on hands and knees), and may elect to attend part of the time. Current research questions center on the function(s) of an outbuilding near the residence and its complicated history. A second group will conduct preservation work at the Stouffer Cemetery from 9:00 a.m. through 3:30 p.m. Following a brief overview of the preservation project, participants will spend the day recording the cemetery, measuring tomb stones, and filling out paperwork to register the site as a historic landmark. Some participants will excavate small mounds of debris on the edge of a field that have resulted from bulldozing over 30 years ago. In 2011, our teams discovered footstones on the top of these piles. Our goal in 2012 will be to determine whether there are missing headstones and footstones buried in this debris.