causes,” says Memphis Mayor AC Wharton. “The administration, faculty and students of Rhodes share my conviction that we will make our great city even greater as more and more people invest in themselves and in each other. I am so grateful for all that they do in our community.”
says the differences between her predominantly underprivileged patients in Memphis and those she met at Centegra are striking. She says the young women she now meets lack education—not just about sex and birth and delivery but about life in general. She has learned to be nonjudgmental.
The notion of service allowing students to discover what they share with people rather than how they are different becomes a theme echoed by many Rhodes volunteers no matter where they work. And students discover that each person has something valuable to contribute.
The MED patients “have different lifestyles and environmental factors that they grew up with. Many are coming from broken homes—I can see cycles of family (poverty) situations that they were born into. These women don’t expect to go to college. Their environment doesn’t expect that of them so they don’t expect it of themselves,” she says. Talking to these young patients opened her eyes to a big need.
“Serving in Memphis, I get a better understanding of humanity—including my own,” says Liz Karolczuck’14, a Bonner Scholar from outside Chicago who has volunteered for the last year and half in labor and delivery at The MED, the Regional Medical Center, Memphis’ public hospital. Ashley Newman ’13, a Bonner Scholar from Atlanta who helped raise enough money and donations last year to hand out 2,400 blankets to the homeless through Manna House, a “living room in Midtown for people from the streets,” and the Memphis Family Shelter, added that she learns something from the attitude of those she serves. “The homeless people I meet at Manna House are so happy. They teach me so much—they give me a real perspective on life,” Newman says. On the other hand, both young women say, appreciating the different lifestyles in the world does not mean ignoring the needs they see. For Karolczuck, working at The MED showed her a world different from the one in which she grew up. At The MED she takes information from expectant mothers, holds their hand while they are awaiting delivery and offers a strong shoulder for them to lean on. Most of them, she says, are only teenagers. Often, Karolczuck is the only support these young mothers have at this critical time in their lives. Karolczuck had volunteered in Centegra Health Center in Woodstock, IL, near her home. She
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Newman understands what Karolczuck is talking about when she mentions the need for education. At the Memphis Center for Reproductive Health this year Newman spends her volunteer time as a patient advocate helping the women who come into the center fi ll out paperwork and feel comfortable. “Women’s health is an interest of mine, actually I’m passionate about it. The center has an incredible nurturing environment—it’s about education and that’s what people lack.” One of Newman’s jobs at the center involves putting together safe sex packets. Through her volunteer work there and at Jacob’s Ladder Community Development Corp., a nonprofit devoted to community revitalization, Newman says she sees a real need for reproductive health education. “There is a horrible cycle of children raising children,” she says. Bonner Scholar Kondwani Banda ’13 of Zambia is focusing on education too—he wants to expand the horizons of high school students in Memphis. “They only see Memphis, they don’t see anything else. They don’t see the world beyond,” Banda says. He is working with the Children’s Radio Foundation in South Africa to create audio “letters” from Memphis teens to audio pen pals in Africa. At home, he says, everyone in Africa listens to the radio. He is recruiting Memphis teens from the Rhodes Shasta Central community center north of campus to pair with Rhodes students. They will use Rhodes radio station equipment—and any equipment Banda can
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