Salkehatchie Summer Service outreach returns
Jun. 14—A casualty of COVID-19 is back on its feet this week in Aiken County, with the return of Salkehatchie Summer Service, a decades-old housing ministry linked with United Methodist congregations throughout South Carolina.
Bobby Coker, with St. John's United Methodist Church, is helping lead the project in partnership with Jeff Snow, who divides his residency between Eastover, near Columbia, and Welch, in the southernmost part of West Virginia.
Volunteers at the local "camp" spend their nights at St. John's and spend most of their daylight hours wielding paint brushes, hammers, power saws and related gear, helping with a variety of home-improvement projects that the homeowners might otherwise find financially overwhelming. This year's group has 25 students on board.
Snow, referring to this week's pool of volunteers, said, "There's a kid here from Spartanburg and West Virginia. We're here from Columbia. We're here from Greenville. They're here from Lexington and ... Batesburg-Leesville, and there's a kid from North Carolina."
Teenagers and adult leaders are focusing their attention this week on one house in North Augusta and another in Aiken, focusing on such concerns as roof repair, window replacement and creating a deck. Activities began Sunday afternoon and are to conclude Saturday morning.
This year's participation numbers represent a huge dip since the last pre-pandemic summer (2019), and hopes are to get Salkehatchie back to full steam, some boosters have said.
"The biggest thing is getting people to come back and get them more involved, because the pandemic really hurt us," Snow said. "It caused everything to stop. The world stopped, and it's hard to get people back into it ... I'm hoping the people come back and they'll want to tell others and they'll want to come next year and help out so we can do it again, and we'll probably be bigger."
It's familiar territory for Columbia resident Molly Evatt, who is preparing for her sophomore year at Wofford College and is taking part in Salkehatchie with her dad, Jim Evatt, a contractor.
"This is my second time," she said, noting that she came on board in 2019 and missed the next three years amid the "hiccup" that ensued.
"I think it's a great way to not only expose yourself to service and helping others. ... It also exposes you to relationships with other people that you're working with," she said.
Acquiring new skills is also part of the package, she said. "I was on a roof today, which is not normally something I would be doing, so it's teaching. You're building new skills and also helping others in the process of getting joy from doing that."
Similar efforts are underway this week in Eastover, Piedmont, Conway, Sumter, McCormick, Chester, Edgefield County and Georgetown. Plans are also in place for a July 15-22 project in North Augusta, with Grace United Methodist Church as the base of operations.
Data on Salkehatchie's website include 200 homes updated every summer by volunteers, 63,000 campers over the course of 40 years, $1 million spent each summer on construction and other supplies, and 6,000 families helped since the ministry began.
It's local, Evatt noted. "It's in South Carolina, so you're helping people that are in your community, and ... most of the time, you're getting to interact with the homeowners. You never know how much you're impacting somebody."
She added, "We've heard so many stories over the years of little conversations or interactions that Salkehatchie members have had with homeowners, and we will get letters back from the people that we're helping and they'll explain these small instances that can completely change their trajectory of life, or have made such an impact on them in ways that we don't even realize."
The South Carolina United Methodist Advocate, in a March article, traced the ministry's background. "Founded by the Rev. John Culp, Salkehatchie began as an initiative 45 years ago to give youth, serving alongside adults, a taste of serving God with their own hands and feet by helping poor people in the state with home repair. Still today, the main focus is serving God by repairing the homes for the persons in need of home repair but with no means to pay for it," it noted.
"Over the years, hundreds of homes received new roofs, ramps, flooring, ceilings, bathrooms, kitchens and improvements in accessibility through the hands of youth at Salkehatchie."
