Seven thousand eight hundred and forty-three miles. That’s how far a cappella singers in Chi Rho will be traveling for their spring mission tour this year. The student-run and directed ensemble has toured nationally and internationally — performing contemporary Christian pop, rock and traditional hymns and releasing 11 albums — since 1993.

Several hundred Wake Forest students welcomed about 50 elementary school students to campus earlier this month to paint their very own desk. WFU students started D.E.S.K. (Discovering Education through Student Knowledge) 12 years ago to provide desks to underprivileged children.

Starting at age seven, Wake Forest junior Jawad Wahabzada spent four years working eight hours a day as a child laborer in Afghanistan. He now lives 7,000 miles from his birth country, but he is telling the story about the children of Kabul.

On April 10, more than 180 students walked barefoot on Hearn Plaza and lined the Quad with paper feet to show support for children in sub-Saharan Africa who walk to school without shoes.

More than 1,000 students danced in Reynolds Gym as part of the seventh annual Wake ‘n Shake Dance Marathon. The event raises money for the Brian Piccolo Cancer Research Fund and the Cancer Center at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.

Hunter DeKoninck knows firsthand the horror inflicted by Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistant Army (LRA). DeKoninck, a senior, traveled to Northern Uganda last summer on a Richter scholarship. There, he helped rehabilitate soldiers abducted into the guerilla leader’s forces.

Schools of Business students are exemplifying Wake Forest’s motto of Pro Humanitate by applying skills they are learning in their “Dynamics in Organizations” class to support a local non-profit agency.

The Peace Corps ranks Wake Forest among the Top 25 Top Peace Corps Volunteer Producing Colleges and Universities – an annual list of the schools which provide volunteers to the organization. This year, Wake Forest is ranked 20th among small colleges and universities.

Spending her Saturdays with Winston-Salem’s homeless has led to Amy Liang creating a documentary film, doing research and building countless relationships. Perhaps most important, it has focused her on studying public health and finding solutions.

For most of senior Meredith-Leigh Pleasants’ young adult life, she was sure that she would follow the straight and narrow career path. But her journey took a right turn in the summer of 2011 after she spent three weeks in Zinkwazi, South Africa.