On September 20th – a beautiful early fall Saturday when most college students would be setting out to attend or watch their favorite football team – some 30 Villanova young people descended on Cranaleith in search of doing service.
Divided into roughly 6 teams working on everything from dismantling the chicken coup with Mike Ciccotti and weeding the garden beds around the house headed up by Judy Lee to laying cardboard and woodchips for apiary paths with Fred. We can’t forget additionally their cleaning up of the terrace (first tier – Ruben Joseph’s team), rebuilding the creek trail working independently, weeding the garden (Jess Wszolek’s squad), and lastly, resetting and weeding the rock path façade adjacent the admin building along with the building bed dominated by thistle (Kathie Ulinski’s group).
Throughout the day there were no sightings of students on cell phones nor efforts to ‘take the easy jobs.’ Instead, we consistently found ‘can do-will do’ attitudes and ‘we’re finished what’s next?’ reflecting the standard work ethic.
Lastly, there were not a few discussions, so easily engaged, about majors that were such a delight … as right underneath the surface there was this assumption of purpose to be had, an expectation of finding a space to contribute to the community.
What a joy! Staff all felt so uplifted at days end … perhaps we implicitly found in these young people the antidote to the nihilism that fills the media and social networks portraying today’s youth as hopelessly disconnected and lost.
A good day indeed!
