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Mars Hill Group "Vacations" in Coal Country
by Derek Hodges
It's Spring Break, and eleven Mars Hillians have crowded themselves into two rooms far from home. Some sit on beds playing cards; others pick guitars as they wait for the real fun. They're going to a club tonight, and they have been promised a good and/or wild time.
The eleven pile into a van and ride to a joint that hangs over a river that runs through a local town. They sing, they dance, they enjoy themselves, but they leave before the party is over. They have to get to bed, for there is much to be done early the next morning. This is not a Fort Lauderdale vacation.
By the time morning arrives, 22 sleepy eyes flash open and 22 hands begin the work set before them. Today's task is painting a preschool room in an old, run-down schoolhouse that is covered with gray and pink paint.
These eleven folks are Mars Hill College students, faculty, and staff. They have come to Coretta, West Virginia, a coal town in the Appalachian Mountains. They represent the Mars Hill College Christian Student Movement, and their mission for the week is the continuation of a growing relationship between the college and Big Creek People in Action, a non-profit group based in the school building.
The hard work of Terri Farless in the LifeWorks office has brought various groups of Bonner scholars to the building before. The group from the CSM is the first non-scholar group of Mars Hill students to visit Coretta.
Big Creek People in Action was formed with the assistance of grants from organizations like AmeriCorps. Its founders and staff have a dream of doing what they can to help the people of the surrounding county. McDowell County, the southernmost county in West Virginia, is one of the poorest in the nation. Thirty-seven percent of McDowell County's population lives below the poverty line. The majority of the rest of the population is not much better off.
McDowell County was once the home of some thriving coalmines. While coal miners are not known for amassing great wealth from their profession, the county still was considered better off while the coalmines were operating. Now most of them have closed down, leaving the county's population, its land, and its economy depleted.
The Mars Hill group had the opportunity to work with Big Creek People in Action and to meet some of those living below the poverty line. One such family included eight people in a two-bedroom house.
Of those eight people, five were children (one of which had been diagnosed with a mental disability), one was struggling with alcoholism, one was battling breast cancer, and one, the father's mother, was bed ridden and prescription-dependent. All eight survived on $200 per month.
An income like that for such a large family doesn't leave much money for home repairs. That's where Big Creek People in Action and the volunteers it brings into the county come in. They find the money and the volunteers to provide needed home repair for families like this one.
In addition to working with community members, the group from Mars Hill had the opportunity to meet some students at local public schools. They spent their time in the schools getting to know the students, telling the students they, too, could go to college, and doing a little recruiting for Mars Hill.
The Mars Hill group spent the most time at the Big Creek People in Action headquarters, the same building that they slept and ate in. They were given the task of painting the ceiling of the center's preschool room, as well as applying wallpaper to the drab walls in the room. After painting the ceiling with a light blue, the group went into a painting frenzy. While they didn't actually finish wallpapering the room, they did complete a mural that covered parts of two walls. They painted mountains, trees, birds, and even portraits of themselves on the doorjamb on one wall. At the end of their time in Coretta, though they hadn't finished the wallpapering they were assigned, volunteer coordinator Marsha Timpson said she was "just thrilled" at the work the group had done.
A second group of Mars Hill students, a group of Bonner Scholars, spent the second half of Spring Break in Coretta after the group from CSM left for a much-needed break.
Note: Hilltop Editorial Board member Derek Hodges is president of the Christian Student Movement and accompanied the group on the trip to West Virginia.
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