Service projects are a staple of the Mennonite tradition, and for youth groups attending Columbus 2009, there are ample options to serve.

Sixty-one agencies will be accepting volunteers throughout the week, many of which will take a new group each day. Servant project groups will leave around 12:30 each day, after a brief orientation session in the Convention Center.

Many youth groups consider service projects a necessary aspect of Mennonite conventions.

“Its always kind of our expectation,” remarked Jo Ward Selman, a youth sponsor from Waterford Mennonite Church in Goshen, Ind.  “We always do a service project.  It’s never a question: the kids just ask ‘What are we doin’?”

The youth of Vincent Mennonite Church, in Spring City, Pa., feel the same way.

“This is the fourth convention we’ve gone to and we’ve always done the service projects,” said Loren Ruth, one of Vincent Mennonite’s youth sponsors.

The assignments will vary greatly depending on the agency each youth group works with.  Arloa Bontrager, the Servant Project coordinator, and her team, Caty Wall and Lori Hershberger Blair, arranged all of the service locations by cold calling organizations and seeking the cooperation of Robert Seed of Keep Columbus Beautiful.

From picking up trash to helping young children in Vacation Bible School, to removing honeysuckle from a waterway with City of Columbus Watershed Cleanup, most anything is possible for adventurous volunteers.  Youth groups are able to request certain types of work, but for the most part, they find out where they are going and what they are doing at the orientation meeting, just minutes before leaving.

The great diversity in service options is partly due to the response of the city of Columbus to the convention’s infusion of Mennonites.

“The city has been overwhelmingly gracious in receiving people,” Wall said.