Lending a Hand

In 2009–10, hundreds of students gave 25,000 hours in volunteer services to the community through Lewis & Clark’s Community Engagement programs. Molly O’Donnell, from Westford, Vermont, was one of them.

In her first year at Lewis & Clark, Molly volunteered for Operation Nightwatch, a drop-in center for homeless people; read for SMART (Start Making A Reader Today); and tutored students at a local high school. But the most intense experience was her spring break service trip to New Orleans, 18 months after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city.

Molly spent a week gutting homes and helping to assess what was salvageable for families who couldn’t afford to return. In empty, mold-covered kitchens, she found drinking glasses still filled with floodwater. In bedrooms and closets, she found photographs and letters. “It was intensely emotional,” she recalls. “I just couldn’t imagine losing all that.” Salvageable belongings were returned to family members, if they could be found. Everything else was tossed onto a pile. “Sometimes, the garbage was piled higher than the houses,” says Molly.

Since that experience, Molly has returned to New Orleans as a volunteer teacher with AmeriCorps. She also has been working with the National Student Campaign for Public Service on a petition to increase funding for public service programs. On campus, as a service coordinator for the Center for Career and Community Engagement, she now organizes many of the programs for which she used to volunteer.

Molly sees the Peace Corps in her future and believes that she will always be involved in some kind of public service work. “I do believe, even if it sounds naive, that one person can make change.”