“What is happening around there?”

“How can we be involved?”

“How can we contribute?”

“How can we help towards making this city even greater?”

Serve901 coordinator Mr. Jeff Riddle hopes St. George’s students will start asking these questions starting on June 1.

St. George’s announced a new partnership with Serve901 on Jan. 29. Serve901 is an organization that brings college students into Memphis to serve the community in hopes that the students will see Memphis in a better light and hopefully will consider living here.  

The goal is that the partnership will be multifaceted, but for now, the most noticeable facet is a space in the McLean Baptist Church that will be converted into a bunkhouse.

For both St. George’s and Serve901, the new space is a welcome addition.

The partnership will give students an opportunity to serve the greater Memphis area with more ease and another environment to learn.

“It’s not just learning about how to be great citizens and great stewards of the community. It’s going out there and doing it,” junior Alton Stovall said.

“We are going to be hands-on working with the brightest minds in the greater Memphis area in making Memphis an even better city,” Mr. Gibson added.

Until recently, when college students came to Memphis, they would either have to sleep on the floor of a church or find a hotel to stay in. Now, the students will have a home base with bunks, a kitchen and a common area.

The space, nicknamed “The Gryph-Inn” by students, is not without need of a little revitalization. That’s where Claire Richardson comes in. Her task is twofold: make efficient use of the space and design it according to student input.

On March 3, St. George’s students met with Ms. Richardson and Mr. Riddle to figure out what vision everyone had for the space. Students decided that the six bunk rooms will have themes ranging from Memphis food to Memphis history and that students will vote on which places are incorporated into the space.

The hope is that the college students will see the places mentioned in their bunk room, then go there, giving them a chance to explore Memphis.

While the space will be mostly used as a homebase for service projects, it will not just be all work and no play.

“Some of it will be service-related, some of it will be purely social. It’s a place where the lacrosse team can go down for a lock-in or we can do a movie night or a game night,” Mr. Gibson said. “The opportunities for use are truly limitless.”

Both St. George’s and Serve 901 hope that the bunkhouse is just the beginning to a great partnership.

“The real idea is that the bunkhouse isn’t the only aspect of this partnership. Ideally, we envision SG901 being learners of the city and the Vollintine Evergreen neighborhood that surrounds the bunkhouse,” Mr. Riddle said. “We envision St. George’s students becoming neighbors.”

As of right now, the goal for the bunk house’s completion is June 1, 2016.

“We are still in the early construction process,” Riddle noted. “We will see how progress goes with different projects like the electrical, plumbing and bunk-building, as there may be some projects that can’t happen simultaneously.”

A lock-in is also tentatively scheduled for the class of the 2017 to kick off their senior year the St. George’s way, with service in the community.

The new space, already being called a “fourth campus” by some, will certainly give students the opportunity not just to serve Memphis, but to become a part of the community.

“It’s a fantastic opportunity for our students to learn all about their hometown and to see the best of their city,” Mr. Gibson said.

Now, only time will tell if St. George’s students can rise to the challenge to strengthen the school community and the greater Memphis area.