Students Spend Summer Serving Overseas

Thirty-one Westmont students are spending at least a month this summer serving communities around the globe. Fourteen students flew out May 11, nine to El Salvador and five to Uganda, through Emmaus Road, a Westmont program that’s been sending students overseas for 11 years.

Students will also be flying to Malawi on May 26, China on May 31 and Russia on July 1. The goals of Emmaus Road are to sponsor activities that serve to increase campus awareness of global concerns, to broaden the worldview of students and to promote the value of diversity.

In El Salvador, students will work with a non-profit organization, assisting business and economic development in La Herraduara. “I’m very excited about the opportunity to serve in El Salvador since it really fits my gifts well,” says senior Michael Mantyla, who runs the business division of the Emmaus Road core team. “We’ll be working in small businesses, schools, medical clinics and many other places.”

Another student group going to Africa will help dedicated ministers in Kampala, Uganda, at God Cares School, serving orphans and engaging the local community through evangelism.

Traveling to Malawi, six students will work with orphans and join in community development near the capital of Lilongwe. In China, six students will volunteer in an orphanage in Qingdao, build relationships with children at a school for the blind, deaf and mute and teach English at a public school. Later this summer, a team of five students will venture to Russia to serve in local churches in Ryazan, assisting long-term ministries with orphans and reaching out to their community.

Emmaus Road participants are responsible for raising the funds for the service projects, which cost from $2,400 to $4,000 per person.