I’m so excited to share with you that next week, March 9-16th,
I will be co-leading a spring break service trip through my college, Messiah
College, to the Appalachian region of Virginia. There, my team, along with
students from other colleges, will be participating in the Appalachian
Community Health Survey Project run by an organization called Restoring Eden. I
will be going door to door in the impoverished coal mining communities of
southwestern Virginia asking residents to complete family health surveys in
order to further verify the research compiled in the previous two years of this
project showing the negative health impacts of coal mining, specifically mountain
top removal coal mining, with the ultimate goal of informed policies being
passed. During my semester abroad this past fall, God really placed the
impoverished in Appalachia on my heart and in my mind, and, as I was praying
for a tangible way to do something about it, He placed this opportunity in my
lap. I am so excited for what God is going to do on this trip, both through me
and my team and the other students, and I would so love to have your prayers.
Also, pray for me as a leader, that God would use me in the lives of my team
members.
In Christ,
Stacie
A little more
explanation…
-- Mountain top
removal coal mining & the project
The mountainous Appalachian region is one of the most
impoverished in the country and has been negatively affected by coal mining,
especially mountain top removal coal mining, in which the summits of mountains
are removed in order to access valuable coal deposits. The earth, as well as
all of the waste from this process, much of it toxic, is dumped into nearby
valleys, burying and contaminating drinking water sources. However, little
research has been done to prove the detrimental health effects of coal mining.
For the past two years, Restoring Eden has partnered with researchers
at West Virginia University to provide them with data to show the correlation
between mountain top removal coal mining and health problems. In fact, the
research gathered so far has shown that cancer rates were twice as high in
mountaintop removal coal mining communities compared to non-coal mining
communities. Next week I will be joining in the third and final year of surveying
to gather further research so that policy makers can make informed decisions on
this issue.
Read more about mountain top removal: http://restoringeden.org/resources/mountaintop-removal
-- Why I want to spend
my spring break doing this
This past semester, Fall 2012, I studied abroad in the
Central American country of Belize with Creation Care Study Program. Through
the program my eyes were opened to so many environmental and social justice
issues that I had never even thought to think about before. Living in an
underdeveloped nation I also experienced poverty in a very real way, in a way
that I had never experienced before through any of my short term mission trips.
However, one of the things that most shocked and saddened me was the
realization that there is real poverty in my own country. I knew that
Appalachia was poor, but somehow my eyes and heart were opened and I truly
understood the reality of it, and it has been weighing on my mind ever since
then. One of the students in the program had participated in this same exact
health survey project and she shared about her experience with us, and about
how coal mining is greatly exacerbating the region's poverty. Then I received
an email from the nursing department at my school saying volunteers were needed
for a spring break trip, and as soon as I opened the attachment and read the
flier and realized it was the same trip that my fellow student had participated
in, God started speaking to my heart and calling me to use my spring break trip
to personally experience the poverty in Appalachia and to do something about
the situation that has been weighing heavily on my mind and heart. Poverty
breaks my heart, environmental degradation breaks my heart, but, as a nursing
major, knowing that these impoverished people are also suffering health-wise
really breaks my heart and moves me to action.
