Since 2006, hundreds of St. Ambrose students have taken a fall afternoon - typically the first Sunday in November - as an opportunity to fan out into surrounding neighborhoods and help with "the everyday stuff." It has become a celebration of service, a group exercise in the practice of enriching lives.
On Nov. 8, more than 400 current SAU students will grab rakes, bags, shovels, leaf blowers, and even a few hammers and nails, to help their central Davenport neighbors.
The following is a story first published in Scene Magazine in November 2013 about the beginning of Bee the Difference Day:
Bee-ing The Difference
Matt Tigges '08 and Katie Vogt Purcell '09, '11 DPT remember one scene in particular from the inaugural Bee the Difference Day in 2006, a day they helped co-organize as a Student Government Association (SGA) project.
Created to promote good will between students and campus neighbors, that day's projects ranged from cleaning neighbors' gutters to raking their yards. Tigges and Purcell were traveling from one project to another to check on progress and offer assistance to the students at work there.
One project stopped them.
"This lady needed her garage cleaned," Purcell said. "Her mother had owned the house and died. She was trying to sort through everything and was overwhelmed."
"It was a huge job," Tigges added. "The furniture was all mildewed. It had to be loaded onto trucks and lots of it taken to the dump."
"We ended up with 20 or 30 students helping," Purcell recalled. "Students kept coming over to help after they finished their other jobs. It was amazing. We got it done."
Bee the Difference Day has become a campus staple over the past decade, providing an easy opportunity for students to dip their toes into the idea of service.
"We saw people who weren't that into service get involved," Purcell said. "Afterward, we heard from a lot of them. They thanked us for our part, and it made me realize how big an impact this program was having."
Emma (Crino) Folland '08 first proposed the Bee the Difference Day project to the SGA after hearing about a similar project at another school. She since has instituted a neighborhood service project at Washington Middle School in Clinton, Iowa.
"The best feeling I get is when once-skeptical students ask me if we can do this again next week," she said.
That's the hidden benefit. Service becomes habit-forming. And it changes the servant in ways they couldn't have foreseen.
"I like to believe I'm more humble," Tigges said. "People are all the same. We all need help at different times and in different ways. It takes all the judgment out of how you look at people. Instead of thinking, 'They probably put themselves there,' my reaction has changed to, 'Is there anything I can do to help?"
Which perhaps is the best lesson of all. Small acts of service - holding the door open for the guy behind you; helping pick up dropped goods; even, as Tigges said, "just listening and talking" - count.
"Service is fundamental to Catholic education," Purcell said. "We are to live our faith in action. That means helping with the everyday stuff."
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