Hocking College offers women students an opportunity to travel around to different Jamaican cities and lend a helping hand while gaining up to six credit hours.
The purpose is to provide an opportunity for women to travel abroad and combine that with a service-learning project connecting women from southeast Ohio with a women's group in Jamaica and collaborates with projects in their community
said Kathleen Kutsko, director of the Hocking College Women's Center. I have always been interested in this work and having people meet people.
While in Jamaica the women will work with the Grandeville Place of Safety, a group home for 6- to18-year-old girls. The women will spend quality time with the girls by facilitating and participating in activities.
Kutsko describes the service project trip as bringing sociology to life - bringing coursework to life - by studying it in the community.
Students also teach the approximately 120 girls how to use computers with computers that were donated to the service project.
The children were very hungry for attention said Mickey Bungard, an addiction studies major at Hocking College.
Bungard said the children wanted people to listen to them and give them a hug once in a while.
The Hocking College women also play games and read to the children at St. Michael's Preschool. Children at the school lack playground equipment and play in a nearby cemetery. Bungard and other participants from the service project have formed a student organization - Circle of Friends - to earn money to buy playground equipment for the children.
We are making their lives easier with the so many things we take for granted. Soap over there is expensive for them said Janice Tanthorey, Women's Advisory Board of the Hocking College Women's Center member.
Tanthorey attended a trip in 2000 and 2001. She plans to return next year and has already filled five suitcases with clothing, soap, lotion, household and personal items.
Participants can earn course credit for a sociology course and a speech course - each worth three credit hours. Members can get speech course credit because they prepare speeches to give to groups and organizations in Jamaica.
The credit hours transfer to any university
including Ohio University
Kutsko said.
The service project travels to Jamaica twice a year and the upcoming trip is the seventh time the group will be going to Jamaica. The cost for the trip is about $1,200 plus tuition. The cost includes airfare, lodging, meals, transportation and excursions. The group hosts fundraising to help pay for the cost.
Women interested in the program should e-mail Kutsko at kutsko_k@hocking.edu by Nov. 20.
Women to Women International Service Project facts
Trip takes place Dec. 13-20
Cost for the trip is $1,200 plus the cost of tuition
Up to 15 women can go on the trip
Project began in June 2000
Hocking College works in conjunction with Jamaican resorts
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