Egghead Cafe: StayCation
MUH student StayCation participants reflect on spring break in service to Hamilton.
When: Noon today
Where: Miami Hamilton Downtown, 221 High St. Order a bag lunch for $5
More info: (513) 785-3251 or
www.ham.muohio.edu/downtown
HAMILTON — For the second year, a group of students from Miami University Hamilton gave up their spring break for a “StayCation” to learn about poverty and homelessness in Butler County, and what can be done about it.
According to Jessica Toglia, an AmeriCorps*VISTA volunteer working out of the MUH Center for Civic Engagement, the purpose of the StayCation was to promote the center’s goals of increase volunteerism among campus community, both staff and students, and to create community partnerships between the school and agencies in Butler County.
At noon today, Toglia and the StayCation participants will present an overview of their week at the Egghead Cafe at Miami Hamilton Downtown.
“When I got here, I found a note from my predecessor saying, ‘If you can do nothing else, you must do StayCation again,’ ” Toglia said.
So in cooperation with co-facilitator Shannon Farrelly from the Office of Resident Life in Oxford, they “put our own touch on it” by organizing a week of volunteer activities and interaction with local social service agencies for the students to participate in.
“We recognize that people in other places have needs, too, but what better way to work than your own community?” Toglia said. “The students needed to have an interest in volunteering, community service and social justice, and need to make a conscious decision to live and learn, commit to the whole week from Monday morning to Thursday night.
“We had a good demographic mix of students,” she added. “There were two men and three women, including a high school student in a post-secondary program at Miami, a mother with grown children and three African-Americans.”
Danny Lakes said he signed up because he wanted to learn more about his community and how to be of service to it.
“StayCation went above and beyond my expectations,” he said, “and I gained a number of valuable resources that I can use now to assist with serving my community.”
The StayCation, which took place from March 7-10, started with a “Poverty Action Simulation,” presented by the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Food Banks in which each participant was given a paper “family” and had to figure out how to provide basic needs.
The group slept two nights on the floor at the Lindenwald United Methodist Church and spent their days in activities such packing food boxes for the elderly at Shared Harvest Food Bank, setting up an over-the-counter pharmacy at St. Raphael’s and making crafts with Berkeley Square residents.
“On Tuesday, we went on a driving tour of Hamilton to learn about its history, looking at the old buildings and learning about its past as a thriving manufacturing center,” Toglia said. “You can’t understand the current situation if you don’t have a context for it.”
On the final day, the group heard from the Hamilton Community Foundation, the local United Way and Hamilton Rotary Club.
“We didn’t want to make it too academic, but there were certain points we wanted to get across,” Toglia said.
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