BY ALLISON KOERBEL
Staff Writer

While most teenagers were sleeping in and watching TV over spring break, the 31 junior and senior members of the VISION Club were not. These students, along with nine adult chaperones, were hard at work on relief projects for Hurricane Katrina victims in Mississippi.

For the eighth time, VISION Club students went down to Bay St. Louis, Miss., the city hit the hardest by the hurricane. The destruction from nearly eight years ago still lingers and thousands of victims are still homeless today.

“The amount of damage the hurricane caused is absolutely tremendous,” club sponsor and retired English teacher Rich Yount said.

Student participants are thrown into a new environment with new tools and new challenges they would not normally face, like how to install a sprinkler system or power wash a fence. They are forced to learn how to face these challenges successfully while working with their fellow classmates.

“They didn’t baby us at all during any of the work projects,” junior Nick Jugovic said. “We had to learn how to do it right and not fool around or else the job wouldn’t get done.”

The students said they were motivated by the friendly and appreciative Southerners for whom and with whom they were working.

“No matter how small the task was that we did, they were constantly thanking us,” junior Dani Hall said. “It made us all feel really appreciated and motivated us to keep working harder.”

Not only were the students taught how to do hands-on projects, they also were taught life lessons and they realized how fortunate they are to be living in the Baldwin-Whitehall area.

The chaperones and students stayed in the St. Stanislaus Catholic College dorms, a school along the Gulf of Mexico, where they got to see first-hand some of the damage the hurricane did.

“Million-dollar beachfront homes along the coast were simply just stilts with stairs leading to nowhere,” Jugovic said.  “It was crazy.”

Many students apply for this project, but spots are available for only half of them. The applicants are put through a rigorous screening process that includes polling faculty members for their opinions of the students.

“Only the ‘best of the best’ kids are chosen for this trip each year,” Yount said. “I focus on strength of character as a deciding factor.”

Those who go – students and chaperones alike — say it is a memorable and a life-changing experience, Yount said.

“The trip is not only rewarding to those living in Mississippi but the volunteers as well,” he said.  “I look forward to the trip every year.”