The Diplomat
Franklin & Marshall’s weekly online newsletter
Students Get Feet Wet in PIT
Fernando Martinez hands Mona Lotfipour a bucket of refuse.
Mona Lotfipour ’12 spent the last few days of her summer vacation hauling bricks and broken mortar to a dumpster at the corner of Chester and Pershing streets in Lancaster city.
The Dallas, Pa., 18-year-old and soon to be first-year student at Franklin & Marshall College removed her hard hat and lowered her dust mask to reveal a wide smile.
“I wanted to start off my year like this,” she said.
Hauling bricks, tearing out walls and remodeling dilapidated homes is usually not on her list of fun things to do, she said, except when you are making new friends and doing something worth while.
Lotfipour is part of a PIT team. It’s short for “Putting it Together,” a program offered by Franklin & Marshall College to get first-year students in touch and involved with the local community.
The week before classes start some 53 first-year students are volunteering in the Lancaster community. Some are working with senior citizens at the Conestoga View retirement community. Others are cleaning up a local conservancy. Still others are volunteering to help city elementary school students prepare for the school year. Lotfipour and seven others are volunteering to refurbish a three-story home at the corner of Chester Street with the Spanish American Civic Association and Habitat for Humanity.
SACA has been buying and refurbishing homes in this neighborhood. Once done, the organization will sell it to a local family. It is part of its continuing effort to promote home ownership in the city’s Hispanic community.
“This is a great way to spend the last week of summer,” said Fernando Martinez ’12, another member of the SACA/Habitat PIT team. “This is a great way to get my feet wet in the community.”
Martinez, 18, of Ann Arbor, Mich., believes that small acts like digging in a basement to prepare it for concrete – what he did Monday morning – can make a difference in people’s lives. Plus, Martinez said he got to work alongside Maxwell Marquez, 18, from York, Pa., who is part of an AmeriCorp program called Youth Build. The group is also working with SACA on the house. Youth Build allows students to raise money for college in exchange for community service.
“They work hard, just like us,” said Marquez, who plans to study languages when he gets to college. He has thought about applying to Franklin & Marshall after he learned from the PIT team members that he can study Italian here.
Making connections like that is why PIT Assistant Jen Stuart ’09 has stayed involved for four years. Working with PIT during her first year at F&M, Stuart painted porch railings with the East King Street Improvement District. Each year since, she has volunteered to help because she believes in being involved where you live. Stuart is leading the SACA/Habitat PIT group.
“This has been one of the best parts of being at Franklin & Marshall. We’re giving back to the community we live in,” Stuart said. As the year starts, Lotfipour said she hopes to continue volunteering with SACA. She said the work is important and she doesn’t want to stop.
“We’re here to help others,” she said.
