WFU students to perform a year of service with Catholic organizations after graduation
While many Wake Forest University seniors will trade their backpacks for briefcases after graduation, three Wake Forest University seniors have chosen not to follow the corporate path.
Maura Proulx, Jackie Shock and Kristin Zipple have chosen to delay their professional careers to spend one year volunteering with Catholic service organizations after graduation. The three women are members of the Wake Forest Catholic Community and have participated in service projects together and individually during their time at Wake Forest.
This spring, the women organized a campus visit by best-selling author Jonathan Kozol who writes about social justice and education equality. More than 2,000 people attended the program.
“When my social awareness was heightened through my education at Wake Forest, I started longing to work for social issues, for justice and peace in the service of others,” Shock said. “My faith is an integral part of who I am, and of my calling, which is why I have chosen to serve with a faith-based organization.”
Shock, a sociology major from Pittsburgh, will work with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in the Republic of the Marshall Islands teaching sixth grade. In addition to her involvement with the Wake Forest Catholic Community, Shock coordinated a volunteer tutoring program called Kids Café in Winston-Salem.
She will spend the summer in Calcutta, working for Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity before her service with the Volunteer Corps begins in August.
Proulx, an English major from Atlanta, will work for the Colorado Vincentian Volunteers. She will live and work with a small group of other volunteers in downtown Denver. The group will serve the poor.
At Wake Forest, Proulx was a peer minister with the Catholic Community. She and Zipple helped initiate the group’s annual student service trip to Costa Rica where students work with Nicaraguan refugees.
Zipple, a psychology major from Hattiesburg, Miss., will work with FrancisCorps in Syracuse, N.Y. She will either serve as a case manager at a women’s shelter or help coordinate a meal program that provides 8,000 meals to the poor each week.
Zipple was the president of the Catholic Community. In addition to helping initiate the group’s Costa Rica service project, she participated in the university’s annual service trip to Honduras twice, serving as a group leader on her second trip.
Wake Forest’s Catholic Community has approximately 350 active members and is led by Father Jude T. Deangelo, Franciscan friar, and Julie Ostergaard, campus minister.
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