Hundreds of Students Flock to Cincinnati for Community Service

Teenagers from across U.S. to visit region for weeks of service; partner with local organizations

Cincinnati, Ohio – More than 900 Jr. high and high school students from all over the country will be traveling to Cincinnati, Ohio June 15-19 and July 13-17 to participate in a number of service projects throughout town.

The groups will be joining Joplin, MO-based Christ In Youth and partnering with Cincinnati-based organizations and ministries to help serve citizens around town in a variety of ways. There are 12 specific organizations that the visiting students will work alongside while in town, including:

While working alongside these organizations, students will paint homes, serve food to the homeless, cultivate community gardens, build new homes, clear out overgrowth in parks and ultimately learn what it means to be Kingdom workers within a community.

“Any student can be a Kingdom worker wherever they’re at,” said Ben Hedger, Director of Engage for CIY. “They can create a farmers market or work with people in the community to get food to people who need it. They can find ways to be working with their schools to help meet needs in their districts. Challenges of how to meet the needs of the community are questions that today’s students should be asking, and we want to create weeks that cultivate relationships with some of the organizations that are working to address these needs so that when students go back home they’ll have this Christ-centered example of how to be a Kingdom worker in their own homes, schools and communities.”

These weeks in Cincinnati are just two out of 13 similar weeks that will take place in cities all over the country. CIY also coordinates mission trips to locations all over the world, and hundreds of students will be traveling to countries such as Cambodia and Honduras this summer.

For more information about CIY or Engage, please visit www.ciy.com/engage.

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