News Article

While most college students will spend their spring break relaxing, 82 Gonzaga University students and 10 GU staff and faculty advisers will spend March 11-18 performing community service at six sites nationwide through Gonzaga’s Mission: Possible program.

Mission: Possible volunteers are motivated to service by Mahatma Gandhi’s declaration: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” This statement also serves as the guiding philosophy for Gonzaga’s Center for Community Action and Service Learning (CCASL), the sponsor of Mission: Possible.

The program is inspired, motivated and run by students. This year’s student coordinators are Doug Bielemeier, Melissa Garcia, Sarah Shean, Sheila Collins, Stephen Holland, and Ted Van Brunt. The participants – freshmen through seniors – and their 10 Gonzaga advisers will travel to St. Louis; San Antonio; Tacoma, Wash; Knoxville, Tenn; Clarksdale, Miss.; and Jonestown, Miss. Planned projects include housing rehabilitation, painting and other building repair initiatives, service work at homeless shelters and soup kitchens, and other projects important to communities in those cities.

The students have worked long hours together since last spring, planning and preparing for this outing. The money to support the program came from fund-raising events, letters of appeal, student contributions and internal university funds.

For more information and cell phone contact numbers for each site, please contact Ann Price, program assistant of CCASL, at (509) 323-6879.