Page 123 - South Mississippi Living - December, 2018

GIVING BACK helping year-round
story and photos courtesy of MGCCC
During this season of giving, Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College students are working hard to give back to their communities. Most of these students do service work through campus organizations throughout the year, and their reasons are usually much the same: They feel like they have so many opportunities and just want to do more for others.
“I know that I’m very lucky,” said Ma’Rissa Crump, a sophomore at MGCCC’s Jefferson Davis Campus. “I have food to eat, the school supplies I need and a place to sleep at night. Not all of our students or people in our community have that.” Crump said she has always focused on making others happy. “It’s something I’ve felt since I was a child. I’ve always wanted to help other people achieve whatever they want to achieve.” Crump works with both the Wesley Foundation and the Baptist Student Union on campus and with her church to provide meals and other resources for individuals who need it. She hopes to set up a resource closet on campus this year to provide school supplies, snacks and a variety of other items to needy students.
Meghan Nguyen, a sophomore at the college’s Jackson County Campus, spearheads most of the service projects for the campus’s Phi Theta Kappa chapter. She is the vice president of Service and takes the job seriously. Nguyen organized student teams for the Mississippi Coastal Cleanup and to help with a local elementary school’s reading fair, gathered supplies for a Hurricane Michael relief drive, and still finds time to volunteer at several other places on the coast.
“Serving others and our communities is something my parents instilled in me and something I’ve really focused on since coming to college. I enjoy seeing the difference we can make in our world,” Nguyen said. Parris Watts agrees, saying that service and volunteering provides as much enjoyment for the giver as for the recepient. “As you mature, you learn that doing things for others is much more fun than getting gifts yourself. I’ve been volunteering in some fashion since fourth grade because my parents were doing the same.”
Watts, a sophomore at the Perkinston Campus, said she is involved in many service projects with the campus’s Reflections Team. “We collect canned goods for the local food pantry, and we do a book drive to collect books that can be donated to area elementary schools. I also do volunteering with organizations outside the college, including working with Head Start and daycares and tutoring children with their schoolwork.”
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