Senior Adele Boerner comes to school each day with two silver washers on a chain around her neck. The washers, engraved with “ASP,” are a reminder of the three summers she has volunteered with Appalachia Service Project (ASP), an organization that focuses on making homes warmer, safer and drier for families below the poverty line.

This summer, Boerner, senior Olive Greene, junior Townes Hamre and sophomores Rocket Hoff and Owen Tachovsky spent two weeks volunteering with ASP in Breathitt County, Kentucky. 

“I think that the work that they do is really amazing,” Boerner said. “It’s a really transformative experience for both volunteers and the families that the volunteers serve. Being in Kentucky is just such a beautiful and wonderful experience. It’s so green there, and it is completely different from being in the city.”

Volunteering with their First United Methodist Church youth group, the Knights traveled by bus throughout the two-day journey and stopped to sleep at nearby churches. When they reached Breathitt County’s elementary school, their home base for the next week, they said goodbye to electronic devices and hello to their shared sleeping quarters, the school gym.

Boerner said the forced detox allowed her to fully engage with the people around her. From gym floor photoshoots to construction candids, she captured her experience on a digital camera.

“Though it is a little bit challenging at first, it is very cleansing because you get away from distractions and really get to connect with the land and the people that you’re with,” Boerner said. “Our inside jokes and things don’t really make sense anywhere else but Kentucky.”

Director of youth ministry Devon Bailey said the Knights were the most artistic and curious members of the volunteer group, often harmonizing while working and asking insightful questions. From finding puppies in piles of rubble to moving through mold in hazmat suits, Bailey watched the volunteers transform into service-minded individuals. 

“You’re sending teenagers to encounter people who are very different from them and give them the opportunity to learn from and love them,” Bailey said. “You’re also teaching teenagers what service looks like. Life isn’t just about building yourself up. It’s also about giving yourself and working hard for something that isn’t going to impact your community necessarily, but it is going to give you something to bring back home.”

Following record-breaking flooding in the area, ASP volunteers were largely focused on repairing the affected homes. Greene and Hamre’s work site was so damaged that ASP nearly canceled the project. 

According to Greene, the family that previously occupied the house was forced to evacuate after the government deemed the conditions “unlivable.” Months-old food was left in the fridge, and there were piles of garbage so large that Greene couldn’t see the front of the house. 

“Everyone that I talked to said it was the most difficult project they’d ever seen,” Greene said. “It was in dire need of repair.”

Greene woke up at 6:45 a.m. every morning and remained at her work site until 4 p.m. Spending her days removing drywall, ceiling tiles and floors, Greene reconnected with her love for physical work. She even discovered a passion for hand sawing.

“The electric saw was in use and I was like, ‘Fine, I’ll learn how to use this like stupid handsaw,’” Greene said. “It was so awkward and weird, but then I got really obsessed with it and even when the regular electric saw was free, I would end up using the handsaw. I ended up writing my college essay about handsaws.”

As Greene peeled back the layers of the walls, she discovered that the house was living history. She uncovered a child’s handwriting on the walls dated from the 1940s and glow in the dark stars that once decorated the ceiling of a little girl’s bedroom.

“I could tell that this was a house that really needed people to love it and care for it,” Greene said. “It’s really cool because you see there’s a reason why they don’t completely demolish these houses and start from the foundation. They have so much history; generations of this family have lived there.”

Boerner, on the other hand, interacted frequently with the occupants of the house she worked on, chatting with the mother around the kitchen table and playing with the children in the yard.  

According to Boerner, connecting with homeowners is not always easy, so each volunteer is trained on how to be respectful to locals and receptive to questions. 

“The communities that we serve are very aware of why we are there, and they can have mixed reactions,” Boerner said. “Sometimes people are very thankful, but other times they can see us and where we come from as well-off city people and they’re just more judgmental of why we’re there, which is extremely understandable.” 

Bailey said that by the end of the trip, the Knights had grown as humans and as volunteers.

“Their awareness for other people, their perspective of poverty, their hearts for those who have less than them and even their hearts for each other, I’ve seen all of that be positively impacted,” Bailey said.

After a week of volunteering, the Knights returned to Austin, leaving their houses for other groups to finish throughout the summer. Greene said that by the end of her service, her work site once again looked like a home. When she went to the ASP Facebook page at the end of the summer to see the finished product, she was proud of all the volunteers who came together to conquer the difficult project.

“I was super glad to see that other teams persevered on the house,” Greene said. “It wasn’t a typical project for ASP, and I wasn’t sure if they’d be able to wrap it up.”

Next summer, Greene and Boerner will be team leaders with ASP, helping younger volunteers learn the ropes of construction. Boerner said this summer made her realize that working with organizations like ASP is her passion. In college, she hopes to serve on ASP’s county staff, organizing projects and living in Kentucky for the entire summer. But Boerner said the mission of ASP and the lessons she learned extend beyond Kentucky and into her life in Austin.

“It’s made me change my perception on how I treat other people and my general position in life,” Boerner said. “I think being in Kentucky where life is a little slower and people are more gracious has given me a different perspective and has helped me be more patient and kind.”