Spring break is usually the time students and faculty take the opportunity to go on trips with their friends or family. Some take the opportunity to have some time off and just relax in their hometown.
Eight WCU students saw it as an opportunity to work and help those in need in the Western North Carolina area. And work they did.
The opportunity was the WCU Alt Spring Break with Cypress Missions with assistance from the Center for Community Engagement and Service Learning. Along with the eight students and one faculty member that attended, Cypress provided five of their own volunteers, totaling around 14 volunteers. They all spent three days on a project that included building a storage room, putting up a large door on the barn, and making the foundation for a shed for the Hoof and Horn Farm in Barnardsville, North Carolina.
Cypress Missions is a nonprofit humanitarian aid organization based in Point Pleasant, New Jersey. The founder, Freddie Fiorentino, has been in construction for over 35 years and has been gathering volunteers for over 20 years to support those who have just been through natural disasters not only in the United States, but internationally.
Fiorentino first got in contact with WCU through the Associate Director of CCESL, Natalie Newman, when Newman was making calls to nonprofits the week after Hurricane Helene ravaged the area.
“I started (working) at Western the week after Helene,” Newman said. “The first day of the job was making calls to nonprofits, and Freddie was one of the people that reached out and we connected and everything just kind of happened the right way.” Newman is WCU alum and a former town of Sylva councilwoman, so she is not a newcomer to the service work.
The trip included only eight students because of this trip being a resurgence of a program by the CCESL that was offered before COVID-19, and according to Newman, they are hoping to make this an annual opportunity for students. An assistant professor for the WCU College of Engineering and Technology, Christopher Cox was also part of the group to help oversee the project.
Hoof and Horn Farm is an unincorporated community north of Asheville, and it is operated by Lauren Watterson. The farm strives to “promote a family-friendly, all ages, non-competitive, and supportive environment” according to their New Student Welcome Packet. They also specialize in therapeutic horse education, which is a method of therapy that can help people with disabilities with physical benefits, such as balance and flexibility, or even psychological benefits, such as developing emotional relationships.
Barnardsville has Dillingham Creek running through the entirety of the town, so when Hurricane Helene came, it was mostly flooded, causing some homes and other buildings to be severely damaged or, in some cases, washed away.
That was the case for three horse barns for Hoof and Horn. They also lost the building that stored the food and riding equipment. All of the animals survived, which includes nine horses, two donkeys, and four goats, mostly because a young Clydesdale horse named Count gathered the animals behind a large wooden building to stay safe, according to Watterson. They’ve had to make due with a cheap RV trailer since the hurricane just so they could have a place to store the large quantity of food necessary to take care of farm animals. And that’s when Cypress, alongside WCU students stepped in.
The main goal of the project was to build a room in the main barn where the horses stay where they would store food and other equipment. Alongside that, the group was tasked to build a door for the barn itself alongside an outline for a shed that will cover a well right outside of the barn. The group started the work on Tuesday, March 11 and for the next three days it was a full days of work until 4 p.m. This included all sorts of different work: from cutting and sawing two-by-fours and laying plywood to drilling nails and putting stakes in the ground. Each member of the group got lots of experience in different parts of construction.
For some people in the group, this wasn’t anything new, as they are construction management or engineering majors. But for some, this was all new territory. But Fiorentino embraced that. He never once got upset or agitated with anyone if they had questions during the project, and the outcome of that was an incredibly positive environment that worked at a faster pace than expected.
“I feel like a lot of times when you know you’re going to be working all day, you wake up in the morning and you dread it,” WCU student in construction management Autumn Silver said. “But I never felt like that, it was a great experience.”
WCU students also assisted Fiorentino and his people who worked on several other projects in the area. They helped with a flooded basement in the home of a double-amputee veteran in the same area. The other was gutting and rebuilding the basement of the Sweet Fellowship Church in Clyde. The fellowship hall is in the basement of the church, and water as high as eight feet destroyed the entire basement. The group basically took down the rotted wood and build frames to replace them, alongside taking down light fixtures.
The WCU group was able to finish with all the tasks – building the room in the barn, the door for the barn and the outline of the shed to store the well in three days. The work had been a “beacon of hope” for Watterson since the traumatic events of Hurricane Helene.
“Living through this, it’s really hard to convey how traumatic this was because we thought we were going to die,” Watterson said to the group on Thursday, March 13, before the group left. “Having y’all come and seeing y’all work so hard to help us get back on our feet is inspiring for me. To know these people care about us. Beyond just the material things that y’all are building for us, you’re helping all of us get up in the morning.”
Cox also wanted to mention the idea of purpose to the group as well after wrapping up the project.
“Purpose is important,” Cox said. “It’s easy to become self-centered, but being able to work in the community is important. I want to encourage you to keep looking for opportunities to use your skills to help those around you.”
If you are interested in providing support for Hoof and Horn Farm, visit their GoFundMe to help them rebuild even further. If you are also interested in attending horse-riding lessons, visit their website to learn more information. If you want to get involved with Cypress Missions, volunteer through their website.
