Students spend spring break volunteering with intentional community in Georgia

What options are available for EMU students seeking something interesting to do over spring break? They can go on a Y-trip! 

The Y-Serve club, EMU’s longest-running student organization, plans opportunities over fall and spring breaks for students to volunteer in locations across the East Coast and the South. Over spring break this year, six EMU students traveled to Comer, Georgia, to work with Jubilee Partners, an intentional Christian community that offers hospitality to refugees and other immigrants. The staff of Jubilee Partners live alongside three to five families as they help them get settled in the United States. 

The community at Jubilee grows fruits and vegetables as a way to provide healthful food, care for the land, and work together outdoors. The six students who traveled there got to participate in this meaningful work. They helped mulch blueberry bushes, plant chestnut trees, dig a new path, and cut out invasive shrubs in the woods. 

Besides their volunteer work, the students explored the 260-acre property, with its fields, forest, river, and even a small waterfall. In the evenings, they played card games with some of the partners and volunteers who live at Jubilee.

Micah Mast, an EMU junior who served as the student leader of the group, chose to go on this trip because his family volunteered at Jubilee Partners for four months when he was only four years old. “I wanted to go back and help out,” Mast said. On the other hand, Ella Richer, a student chaplain in her first year of college, had never been to Georgia but wanted to visit an intentional community. 

Shawna Hurst, a first-year student who helped plan the recent Intercollegiate Peace Fellowship Conference at EMU, saw the trip as a way to meet others who focus on peace and justice. Hurst finds peace work “inspiring, fulfilling, and much needed.” The trip helped her learn more about what happens to refugees who end up in U.S. detention centers.

Erin Loker, a first-year student and Y-Serve leadership team member, said some of her highlights were getting to know the other students who went on the trip and hearing the stories of the people at Jubilee. Every weekday, the community gathers to eat lunch and share noontime devotions, which provided a good opportunity for the students to meet the people living there. Richer reported many interesting conversations with the residents about living in community, choosing to live simply, welcoming refugees, and giving generously.

A highlight for Mast was giving a presentation on how EMU students are pursuing peace and justice. The Jubilee community appreciated learning how students combine their desire for a better world with their faith through events like the Intercollegiate Peace Fellowship Conference and other work EMU Peace Fellowship has been doing.

For Loker, the trip taught her about hard work and simple living. Even though she had never planted trees before, the volunteer work was “a cool experience.”

 “People there shared a lot and lived minimalistic lives,” she said. “It helped me reflect on how much I have that I don’t really need and what’s important to me.”