Student Life
Students Reach Out
While many of their classmates were enjoying the first days of 2006 at home, seven Penn State Altoona students took time out of their winter break to help families in Mississippi devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
Melissa DeiCas, a campus minister from the Altoona Collegiate Outreach, led the group to Ocean Springs, Mississippi, to work with the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. Although this area of Mississippi had been miles away from hurricane flood damage in the past, Katrina's storm surge left previously safe towns turned to rubble. Students worked for four days, helping one family empty their belongings from their attic so that their home could be demolished, and cleaning out a previously untouched seafood restaurant.
The Altoona Collegiate Outreach is an organization committed to providing a vital Christian presence and ministry to the students, faculty, and staff of Penn State Altoona.