Service-Learning Project to be Presented in Hazelwood

Students in an Honors College class will be presenting the fruits of their service-learning labor at noon on Wednesday, May 5, to the Hazelwood community.

As part of the project, students in the class of Dr. Evan Stoddard, associate dean of the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts, focused on two youth-oriented programs.

Students worked with Amachi, a mentoring program for elementary- to middle-school students whose parents are incarcerated, to help recruit volunteers.

The sweat equity portion of the project involved building an outdoor classroom at the  Hazelwood YMCA, a branch of the YMCA of Greater Pittsburgh that serves Hazelwood, Homestead, Oakland, Squirrel Hill, Lincoln Place, Hays, Greenfield, Glenwood and Glen Hazel.

Students built five benches into the ground, facing a podium, in an open-performance area, said Will Wighton, one of the 18 students involved. Plans are for a garden to be built at the other end of the lot, “so it would be a perfect complement to that,” Wighton said.

For Wighton, a freshman finance and accounting major from New Jersey, the program presented him an opportunity to learn about Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods. He also enjoyed, “Feeling what it’s like to actually make a difference when we saw the reaction of the people who run the YMCA. They were just overjoyed and were more than happy to work with us from the beginning.”

At the noon presentation, which will be held in the outdoor classroom of the YMCA at 4713 Chatsworth Ave., students will discuss the details of both projects. The campus community and Hazelwood neighbors are invited to attend.