If it’s spring, and you’re in deep in Appalachia, and you hear hammering, chances are you’ll run into Gesselle E. Carradero, Class of 2002. Every year since 1999, when she first volunteered as a student for the Christian Appalachia Project, Carradero has returned to the fog-blanketed mountains of Kentucky to help build and improve housing stock. “The first year I was curious,” she writes of her motivation. “The second year I was prepared. And the third year was a calling.…”

Now working as a lab supervisor at Sensory Spectrum, Inc., Carradero still works with CAP, which is the brainchild of a Catholic priest named Ralph Beiting, who was sent to Kentucky in 1950. About eight Mount Saint Vincent students volunteer in Work Fest, an alterative spring break sponsored by CAP, every year.

For Carradero, the experience goes well beyond hours of hammering. “It is overwhelming to see men cry in front of their families because strangers drove from all over the country to repair their house,” she says. “It is amazing to see how much can be accomplished in so little time, and it is humbling to realize how much is out of our hands.”