Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

The Edmundite Missions received a helping hand in the form of a team of AmeriCorps NCCC volunteers earlier this week to serve and prepare meals at the Bosco Nutrition Center and staff the Missions’ Academic Resource Center at the newly opened Dr. Michael and Catherine Bullock Community and Recreation Center.

“We’re super excited,” said AmeriCorps NCCC Team Leader Sophia Trueblood.

Trueblood said the team arrived in Selma on Monday and that the team would remain in the Queen City helping out the Community until the end of September.

Since their arrival, Trueblood said the team has mostly gone through training, learning safe food practices, what sort of education the students in the Academic

Resource Center will need as well as background information on Selma and the needs of the community.

“AmeriCorps NCCC programs do a wide range of work and the work that’s being done by the Edmundite Missions in Selma in kind of right along the lines of what we’re trying to do,” said Trueblood.

Trueblood said that AmeriCops NCCC condauct a wide variety of service around the country, everything from urban development to environmental conservation.

“Sometimes we’ll be doing taxes for people in low-income communities, sometimes we’ll be doing trail building or disaster clean up,” she said. “This is just one part of the many things we do.”

Edmundite Missions CEO Chad McEachern expressed is appreciation for the volunteers as they spend the next month helping out in the community.

“We are always excited to welcome volunteers to the Missions and have them connect with the work we are doing. For us, it is about more than having a group help do the work, although that is a blessing,” said McEachern. “The most important thing is for groups like this to experience poverty services and hopefully develop a sense of compassion for those in need throughout their lives. The team members are from all across the nation and from as far away as Guam. We are so excited to host them in Selma and have them experience our community.”