News & Events
Service Day 2010: Planting seeds in the community
Alumnus Jack Allison ’63 provides medical care in Haiti
2010 Sustainability Speakers Series
WWC makes two top-20 sustainability and green lists
We Still Lay featured at AVL film festival
Author of Girl in Need of a Tourniquet to speak on campus
Global Studies Colloquium
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Register for Homecoming and Family Weekend – October 1-3, 2010
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Service Day 2010: Planting seeds in the community
Morris’ Community Pavilion on campus was mostly a sea of brown the morning of Aug. 20 – not because its lawn was parched, but because brown was the T-shirt color for Service Day 2010. About 350 Warren Wilson students, staff and faculty gathered there on a bright summer morning before fanning out in buses and vans to nearly 20 sites across Buncombe County for several hours of service to community.
This year’s Service Day focus was on local food and food-security issues in the surrounding community. To that end, the energetic brown-shirted brigades were dispatched to a variety of locations: school gardens, community gardens and other partner organizations.
One of the nearby locations was the aptly named Vets Victory Garden at the ABCCM Veteran’s Restoration Quarters and Transitional Housing. The facility, established in 2007, serves about 150 veterans in a homelike environment as they work through difficult issues that cannot be managed well in other settings. The adjacent garden, on a patch of high ground near the Swannanoa River, was established with the help of Warren Wilson students and provides fresh vegetables for the facility, which serves three meals per day. There’s also a seasonal tailgate market on site each Wednesday.
On Service Day at the Vets Victory Garden, Warren Wilson students led by Melissa McLamb were engaged in several tasks at the Vets Victory Garden, including weeding, fertilizing and bean planting. “It’s really great to have all these extra hands helping out,” said Tom Farrell, now in his second year of managing the garden.
Not far away, another group of students led by Rachel Tutweiler worked at Manna FoodBank, a longtime community partner of the College. Late morning, the group was engaged in sorting through garden harvests – in this case, barrels of potatoes. This task and others provided help to Manna in its role of storing, warehousing and distributing food to nonprofits in 16 counties across Western North Carolina.
At day’s end, all the groups reconvened at the pavilion, this time to eat watermelon served up by members of the President’s Advisory Council (PAC) and to share ideas and information from the day. “Awesome” was perhaps the most common word students used in describing their experiences during the day. And as a participant from the Burton Street Community Peace Gardens noted, everyone returned to campus “tired, hungry and dirty” – but happy.
Alumnus Jack Allison ’63 provides medical care in Haiti
Shortly after the devastating January 2010 earthquake hit near Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Dr. Jack Allison ‘63 was contacted by the CEO of the Greater Caribbean Energy and Environment Foundation (GCEEF) and asked to assist in providing medical care there. During his weeklong stay in Haiti, Allison’s team treated hundreds of patients in makeshift clinics with limited supplies. “GCEEF has been intimately involved in helping to develop Haiti for nearly 30 years, and they are committed to rebuilding Haiti over the long haul, providing ongoing medical care, public health, food, clean water, education, shelter, micro-finance and other important machinations,” Allison explains.
In addition to providing emergency medical care, Allison has been commissioned by the CGEEF to write three songs. The idea to commission these songs came from Allison’s past success in using music to create social change as a Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi the 1960s. The threat of flash floods in Haiti, worsened by rampant deforestation, is the focus of Allison's first song, "Don't Sleep in the Gulley." The other two songs deal with issues of sanitation and disease and encourage people to wash their hands with soap and to put garbage in its place. Listen to “Don’t Sleep in the Gulley,” which is sung in both Creole and English and is being played on 25 radio stations throughout Haiti.
Read Allison’s full account of his recent experiences in Haiti.
2010 Sustainability Speakers Series
The College’s Environmental Leadership Center (ELC) hosts the Sustainability Speaker Series on campus this fall. Anita Brown-Graham will open the series on Sept. 14, 7 p.m., at the College Chapel. Since 2007, as director of North Carolina’s Institute for Emerging Issues, she has worked alongside state leaders like former Gov. Jim Hunt to focus citizens from the mountains to the coast on the state’s most pressing issues. Check the 2010 Sustainability Speakers Series schedule and make plans to attend.
WWC makes two top-20 sustainability and green lists
The College is among 18 nationwide to be included on The Princeton Review’s 2011 Green Rating Honor Roll. WWC is the only N.C. institution on the honor roll, having received the review’s highest possible green rating of 99. According to The Princeton Review’s website, “criteria for the green rating cover three areas: whether the school’s students have a campus quality of life that is healthy and sustainable; how well the school is preparing its students for employment and citizenship in a world defined by environmental challenges; and the school's overall commitment to environmental issues.” For more information on the review’s 2011 green ratings, click here.
For the fourth year in a row, the College is one of Sierra Magazine’s 20 “Coolest Schools” – college and universities recognized for their efforts to stop global warming and to operate sustainably. Warren Wilson, ranked No. 14 this year, has appeared on the annual list ever since it was launched in 2007. The only other school in the Southeast to make the 2010 list is Georgia Tech, at No. 20. “Warren Wilson attracts students who want to change the world,” Warren Wilson President Sandy Pfeiffer said. “We immerse them in our Triad of academics, work and service in which they tackle global issues on a local scale, and work toward a resilient, sustainable community every day.”
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