UCM Lending a Hand Throughout the Area

Hey there, everyone, my name’s Ryan and I’m one of the content producers working behind the camera to make the multimedia pieces.  This year I’ve been assigned to cover United Campus Ministry.  In case you’re unfamiliar with UCM, they are a nonprofit organization that has been in Athens since 1968 and encourages engagement between Ohio University and the Athens community while promoting spiritual growth, community service, and work for justice through socially progressive interfaith values. 

Often times down here at OU there seems to be a real disconnect between the students on campus and the rest of the Southeast Ohio area that we call home for four or more years.  While there are certainly some Bobcats down here who couldn’t tell the difference between Albany and Amesville or Shade and Stewart there is a significant population of students who are working hard to break that stereotype by becoming involved not just in the immediate Athens are, but in towns throughout Southeast Ohio.  This Saturday I had the opportunity to tag along with a few of those students as a group of volunteers from UCM traveled up to Shawnee, Ohio bright and early to volunteer with the Little Cities of Black Diamond organization.

It was pretty amazing to see a group of college students gather at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning and devote most of their entire morning and afternoon to helping out people in a small town almost an hour away from campus.  Though, really, the most impressive thing wasn’t the time commitment that the volunteers made, but rather how they interacted with the members of the community in Shawnee.  This seems to be an overarching theme in all of the work that United Campus Ministry does.  Trust me, it’s a big organization that is involved in a dizzying amount of activities and causes throughout the Southeast Ohio region, but it seems that at the heart of everything that UCM does is the desire to bridge the gap between students at Ohio University and the community that surrounds them.  Needless to say there are some parallels in that and what we hope to do here at Project C, so I’m pretty excited that we have the opportunity to work with them this year, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what more they have to offer the community!

- Ryan Young | Content Producer