Instead of a trip to the beach for spring break, students from Pennsylvania-based Arcadia University are lending a hand in New Iberia’s West End community gardens for the week.
The university’s Community and Civic Engagement Office offers on a program yearly for students to volunteer community work nationally and internationally during spring break. Last year, students ventured to Tijuana, Mexico.
The year before that, however, they were in New Iberia restoring a building on Hopkins Street that was intended to be the Iberia Community Co-op. Director for the program Cindy Rubino said the group is continuing the work they started in 2015 with this week’s project.
“It was just an aspect of bringing it back, putting good energy into it and somebody seeing there was a chance (for the building),” Rubino said. “The co-op was a great use of that space, now we can take the produce made here and sell it at the co-op. I love the continuity for us for being apart of that space and doing the next step.”
The school has had a connection to Louisiana ever since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when Rubino said the program made contact with the New Iberia-based Southern Mutual Help Association.
The students got into town Sunday night and began working Monday between three spaces in the West End that will become the locations of community gardens. Several of the students marveled at the weather, especially with Pennsylvania in the midst of 18-inches of snow at the moment.
“This is our first day of work and we leave Saturday,” Joe Dooney said. “It’s been nice so far.”
For those living in the area, the work being done throughout the week came as a complete surprise. One of the proposed community gardens is located on Ambassador West Lemelle off Hopkins Street, where resident Martha Sinegal said she’s tried to keep the property clean for years.
“We’ve tried to clean it ever since we moved here,” Sinegal said. “Every time we cleaned it, they would turn around (and throw trash). It go so bad that we had to start from that end by the stop sign to that end by the tree because the drainage was stopped up. You wouldn’t believe it.”
Envision da Berry Director Phanat Xanamane said the students will be staying within those areas throughout the duration of the week. Wednesday, Rubino said they plan to take a day off, when they plan to take a trip to The Blue Moon Saloon in Lafayette and possibly go on a swamp tour to see scenic areas of the Sportsman’s Paradise.