Notice Board Announcements

1. There will be two short work days this weekend. Saturday we will be helping at the Warming House. (We will be helping to build shelves and HELPING to organize their donated food inventory.) On Sunday we will be making crutches for Haiti in Machias with the Christian Youth Corps (CYC). Due to capacity we will limit volunteers each day to 10. Sign up here: http://bit.ly/aSPCJa

2. Our efforts with Villa Maria, local schools, and churches continues. We now have a website devoted to these efforts: http://FoodForHaitiNow.org

Our goal is to feed over 200,000 people, provide over 200 pairs of crutches and walkers, and at least 20 tents.

We need you to get involved. We can not do it ourselves. So get involved. Email Steve Gearhart, Rob Ryer, Emily Deragon, Phil Penepent, or even Jim Mahar for more information.

3. While some details still need to be worked out, there is a high likelihood of a small spring break trip to Atlanta. There will be a strict limit to the number who can go (about 25% the size of a normal spring break trip). There is a VERY short meeting at 5:40 in Murphy 103 (Thursday) (I have class at 6:00, so it is going to be VERY short!). You will have to pay airfare and $50 for food/ground transport.

4. On March 27th we will be having the first even Bonaventure International Service Day. We are asking people to go and help others wherever they are and then share pictures/videos/and even recorded audio of what you (or your group) did (we will be having a phone system set up to record audio messages on that day). With these pictures and voice recordings we will put together a video capturing a day of good deeds around the globe! (think of it like tracking Santa!)

So far we have groups signed up in about 30 US cities and 10 countries! But we'd love many many more. Indeed, this is the first year of it and eventually we'd love it to cover all 195 countries! (ok we can dream!) So, if you have friends or family that do not live on campus, get them involved! They need not have a tie to SBU, and the service can be as small as one person helping an elderly neighbor go to the store or as major as 150 volunteers working in Los Angeles.
See http://bonaresponds.org/nsd.html for more information.

Coverage of the Atlanta/Greenville Trip

From tomorrow's BV by Elizabeth Grady

"Twenty-one students made the trip south to help rebuild the orphanage, which burned down in 2007. The students stayed from Jan. 5 to 13 and worked on tasks including installing piping and hanging ceilings.

Steve Gearhart, a senior physics major, was responsible for the organization of the trip, Jim Mahar, coordinator of BonaResponds and associate professor of finance, said.

According to Ally Kotz, a sophomore elementary special education major, the goal was much broader than just rebuilding.

"The main goal of this trip was to help as many people as we could," Kotz said"

Rob's perspective on the trip

Rob is a student leader of BonaResponds. Few people understand what it means to volunteer better than he does. He is a motivator, an incredibly hard worker, and a friend. Here is how he summed up what the trip meant to him and how he is going to deal with that feeling of sadness that affects most volunteers after the trip is over:

"It’s one in the morning. I just turned off my cell phone, plugged in my iPod, turned on my flat screen TV, cranked up the heat to remove the night chill, opened the fridge for a quick snack, grabbed a bottle of water, and opened my laptop to check my favorite websites. But as I lay here in my bed, wrapped in a blanket, in a house, as my family sleeps, a feeling like none other has come over me, and I realize that the world I was living in for the past ten days has all gone away. I have slipped back into the world we have all become to know and live in all too well.

For the past ten days, I have been on a BonaResponds trip. What is BonaResponds? What kind of world have I been living in? What feeling do I possess which has inspired me to write this down? These questions are all easily answered by me and anyone who was on our most recent BonaResponds trip to Atlanta, Georgia and Greenville, South Carolina. In fact, this feeling can be described by any individual who has ever attended a BonaResponds Trip. It is a feeling that comes over you when you realize that tomorrow you will probably not make a difference in someone’s life. Tomorrow, you will most likely take for granted the objects you possess. Tomorrow, you will most likely slip back into the comfortable world you were living in before this kind of trip. Anyone who has been on a BonaResponds trip in the past knows exactly what I mean and how I feel. It is almost as if you are in a completely different world.

For a BonaResponds trip is like none other; it is an opportunity to help. This world that I speak so highly of is full of friendship, care, respect, gratitude, hope, understanding, and listening. The list can go on and on describing a world in which laughter fills the air, love fills the soul, and the want to help others is so prevalent in the air around you that it is an inspiration to help, especially to those who cross your path. BonaResponds opens the very doors to this ideal world. I have been there as many others have as well; it is without a doubt a group that will leave an impact on your life.

But as I lay here, I realize that tomorrow I will no longer be a part of that world. This is the feeling I feel so strongly in my heart - a feeling that tomorrow I will slip back into the world that so many of us have come to take for granted. A world in which we live our life without realizing the life we have. Ten minutes before writing this letter, I was in that world. I thought nothing of it to raise the temperature of my beautiful home, eat a snack only because it looked good, plug in and view electronic items that are a luxury to have, and lay in a home with an amazing, healthy, loving family that is sleeping with ease.

Ten minutes before writing this letter I was the same person I am now. I was the same person I was as I helped those in need for the past ten days, and ten minutes after completing my thoughts I will be the same person. So what changes within me? How can I slip back and forth from each world? How do I continue to live in that world where I so desperately wish to be? The answer is simple: nothing changes. Only the opportunity to help is increased and given to me in an easier form to achieve. Someone tells me who I can help, what I can do, and where to do it. “It” is given to me in the morning; I complete “it” in the day, and reflect upon “it” at night. So, if “it” is the opportunity to help, why will tomorrow be different? It doesn’t have to be.

I can help someone tomorrow, I can impact a life tomorrow, I can make a difference tomorrow, and so can you. I may not receive a name, an address, and a job list, but I will receive the ability to help and the desire to help. And if you live your life with the ability and want to help, you will find a way to help; I promise you. We all possess the want to help, love, care, understand, listen, and appreciate. We just have to put ourselves in a position to find it and use it. BonaResponds gives us that opportunity day in and day out, but it does not have to stop when the trip ends.

So do it. I will tomorrow. I will wake up in the morning and try to help someone. I will volunteer tomorrow. I don’t have to build a house, or clean an entire park, but volunteering is helping others, and I will volunteer tomorrow and help someone tomorrow. It is as simple as that. Should the opportunity arise to help someone tremendously in a way that impacts a life greatly, I will take advantage of it. But if I simply hold the door for a lady, or offer to help carry a grocery bag to her car, or shovel a neighbor’s driveway, I will do it. These acts and many others are considered helping others and helping others is considered volunteering; volunteering is the door to the world of a BonaResponds trip. To volunteer or help is the way to pass through that door and enter that world. It is your choice to enter or not.

After writing my thoughts down to you, these feelings that I am no longer part of the BonaResponds world are gone. I am excited to wake up in the morning, to help someone, to bring joy and a smile to someone, and maybe inspire that someone to help another someone. You never know who you may help. It may make a larger impact in people’s lives than you expect, realize, or will ever know. I promise you one thing though: helping someone will help you.

So, if you have ever been on a BonaResponds trip in the past, or even volunteered with BonaResponds for a day in the past, try to live life tomorrow or even today as if you were part of BonaResponds again. If you have never been a part of BonaResponds, don’t worry. BonaResponds does not possess a secret as to how to help others; BonaResponds just allows the opportunity to help. So, tomorrow, go volunteer, go help, go live your life as if you were on a trip. You will be glad you did.

Rob Ryer"

BonaResponds to help build children’s home in Georgia

BonaResponds to help build children’s home in Georgia:

"BonaResponds will help rebuild Leigh Cottage, a children’s home destroyed in a fire two years ago. When the cottage reopens, it will be used to house youth in the United Methodist Men’s Group’s Independent Living Program.


“It is going to be a great opportunity for us to help and for our volunteers to use some of the skills that they have developed building homes locally and helping this semester in Machias,”...“I am sure that the trip will be a very rewarding experience for the volunteers and, more importantly, a big help for the children and families who need the help in the Atlanta area.”"

More information on our Atlanta trip

BonaResponds will be going to Atlanta Georgia to help build the United Methodist Children's home. The home was destroyed by fire in 2007. The work will be everything from installing insulation, rough wiring, and with luck (depending how far we get) drywalling. And I am sure much more. Additionally, there may still be some flood clean-up. Depending on the turn out we will also like to

These skills are all readily learned and no experience is necessary. We are in particular need of people over 25 years old to help drive vans to and from the Airport. additionally, we will be responsible for our own cooking, so anyone who likes to cook for large numbers of people, please come!

The trip will be from January 3 to 14. You can come for as long or as short as you like. We will arrange for transportation to and from the airport. The cost of the trip is $50 (to cover food) plus airfare (you will be responsible for arranging the air transportation).

There is a meeting to discuss the trip on Thursday December 10th, at 5:30 in the Dresser Auditorium C in Murphy. Please come. Given the late date, we will not have time to have another meeting so please make every effort to attend. If you really can not attend, please contact Steve Gearhart at gearhasm@sbu.edu.

For more information, please see our blog http://BonaResponds.blogspot.com

Remember we really need faculty and staff to come to help drive. If you can come, we'd really appreciate it and YOU will really like it!

The United Methodist Children's Home

This is where we will be working in Georgia:

The United Methodist Children's Home:

"Thanks to the efforts of United Methodist Men and GlenCastle Constructors and the generosity of countless friends of the Home, the rebuilding of Leigh Cottage (which was destroyed by a fire in 2007) is going great! Click here for more details and photos of the construction."