For the last week, I have spent time sleeping on the floor in a community center in Lumberton, North Carolina. Lumberton is located in Robeson County, which is the poorest county in NC. Robeson is a very diverse community, and the Lumbee American Indian tribe makes up a large percentage of the population.

I visited Robeson County with eight other students participating in an Alternative Winter Break Trip, run by the APPLES Service Learning Center at UNC. We spent the week learning about the culture, visiting non-profits in the area, and performing service in the community.

On Friday, we visited Sacred Pathways, a soup kitchen and social justice center in Penbroke, the neighboring city to Lumberton. As we walked around the center, I couldn’t help but notice that there were several posters displayed about sexually transmitted infections, and brochures and condoms were laid out with other educational material.

During our question and answer time, I asked Dr. Ruth Woods, the director of Sacred Pathways, about her experience doing work on health and sexuality with a low socio-economic status population. She commented that Sacred Pathways brought an AIDS testing van to the center every three months. They provided the people who came to their soup kitchen with a bag of grooming products as an incentive to get tested. If participants did have a positive test result for HIV, Sacred Pathways had staff members who could sit down with them and explain to them the resources and options in their community. “This is taking it to the streets!” she commented.

Dr. Woods also mentioned that she had attempted to get the AIDS van taken into the public schools and housing centers in Robeson County, but had faced protests by members of the school board and directors of the community housing centers. She commented that at times social justice work was a “constant struggle against a system that keeps people oppressed.” I was inspired and excited by the work that Dr. Woods does. She feeds dozens of homeless and hungry people every week, and she and the rest of the staff at Sacred Pathways also invest their energy in creating a world where the disadvantaged have the basic resources and necessities that they need.

For more info on the APPLES Program at UNC, visit this link- http://www.unc.edu/apples/.