VOLUNTEERS FIX UP, STITCH TO `MAKE A DIFFERENCE'

At the Cape Girardeau Civic Center, volunteers spent Saturday morning putting down carpet, scrubbing windows and walls and generally sprucing up the place.

At the University Center on the Southeast Missouri State University campus, students made quilts.

At Horseshoe Lake, Ill., volunteers from TIP of Illinois Home Health Care Service planted Bradford pear trees and mums.

Volunteers throughout the area turned out Saturday for national Make a Difference Day. Nearly 560,000 people volunteered their time for last year's event. The day of inspirational effort is co-sponsored by USA Weekend magazine and the Points of Light Foundation.

At the civic center, volunteers from Alpha Delta Pi, the First Presbyterian Church and the center's board of directors rolled up their sleeves and got to work "to see if we could put a dent in some of the repairs and refurbishing that we need to do," said Ed Slaughter, president of the center's board.

"Now that we're fixing it up a little, maybe more kids will see us and come by."

This is the first year Alpha Delta Pi has been involved in the national volunteerism event, said Melanie Rudolph, National Make A Difference Day chair for the sorority, "but we hope to make it an annual event."

"We're cleaning out the civic center, we're laying carpet, we're washing windows, we're doing all kinds of things in an effort to make things better for the kids at the civic center," Rudolph said.

Slaughter said civic center staff members have worked with the sorority and First Presbyterian Church before on projects. All Saturday's cleanup took "was a phone call. It wasn't a matter of twisting any arms," he said. "We all just came together here."

"Until last spring, I didn't even know there was a National Make A Difference Day," Slaughter added.

Don Drews, director of Christian education for First Presbyterian Church, said Saturday's cleanup "was one of the first projects that came up. We're hoping there will be other things where we can help out, whether it be work projects or fun things. This is just a place to start."

At Southeast, women in Gamma Sigma Sigma set up an assembly line to make quilts for ABC Quilts, a not-for-profit group that makes and distributes quilts to HIV-positive and drug/alcohol-exposed infants throughout the world.

"We're working on around 15 quilts that we hope to finish here today," Tracy Price, a senior, said Saturday. "We've got some mothers here helping out. Most of us didn't know how to quilt when we got here, so we learned that this morning."

"If the baby passes away, the quilts can be washed and re-distributed, or buried with the baby or kept by the family as a keepsake," she said.

This is the first year Gamma Sigma Sigma has been involved in National Make A Difference Day, Price said, "but we're a service sorority, so we do stuff all the time. This is just the first time we've done this on this day."

Price said she learned about the ABC Quilts project at a national convention and thought it sounded like a good project for the sorority. "We're planning to have an even bigger quilting day next semester where we can involve the whole community," she said.

"I think it's a great project," said Paula Schnurbusch, a senior. "It's one of those things that you think about and it almost gives you goose bumps, 'cause it's just so touching."

It's important to give something back to the community, Schnurbusch said.

"Sometimes the world just seems so crazy that I think if more people would just stop and give a little bit of time that it would make a huge difference," she said.

Schnurbusch was among the novice quilters, adding she is "definitely not" skilled with a needle and thread.

"I've gotten quilts as presents before, and it just really amazes me all the time what goes into making them," she said.