Hogs and Kisses is a micro-sanctuary that opened its barn doors in Charlottesville in 2021. This year, Madison House is partnering with the farm to give UVA students an opportunity to volunteer with the seven pigs, five rabbits, and two turkeys! Click to learn more about Hogs & Kisses and the volunteer experience.
Madison House’s Creating Assets, Savings, and Hope (CASH) program works to train and coordinate student-volunteers to provide free tax preparation for low- and moderate-income community members…This year marks 15 years since the launch of the C’ville Tax Aid Coalition — a partnership including Madison House and the University of Virginia Community Credit Union that is coordinated by the United Way of Greater Charlottesville. Since its inception in 2007, the Coalition has generated over $35 million in direct economic impact for the Charlottesville area community.
As a first year at the University of Virginia (UVA), Chelsea Li (CLAS ‘20) wanted to soak up all the opportunities that the University had to offer. She found herself exploring new clubs and classes and was especially eager to be in the community. “In high school,” she said, “I felt as if I was missing a lot of the learning that happens outside the classroom.” This desire to stretch her curiosity across disciplines and interests, along with an intrinsic desire to uplift those around her, was what first brought Chelsea to Madison House.
The House has long been a place where students can come to find or rediscover themselves and their place within the community. This held true for Paige, who shared that “it gives me peace of mind knowing that I am a good swimmer but that's not what defines me. There's so much more to life, like helping others. My time at Madison House has allowed me to see that.”
Kruse, from Ridgeland, Mississippi, is a fourth-year student in the McIntire School of Commerce. She initially got involved in the program because of her prior experience in advocacy work.
“Ultimately, the goal of the program is for students to learn about environmental science through a native lens,” Kruse said. “Maelee Hearington, another UVA student, and I wrote the curriculum to focus on science, social activism and social justice. We also provide additional resources like workbooks, markers, easels and notebooks.”
For many UVA students, Madison House is a place to give back to the Charlottesville community—whether it’s mentoring kids, working in local clinics, or helping at food pantries and community gardens. But for a few lucky Hoos, service was a shared passion with their soulmate! This Valentine’s Day, we celebrate three UVA alumni couples who volunteered at Madison House during their undergraduate years.
There is an impressive number of current and former Hoos who are Paris-bound for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games! We are especially excited to cheer on Paige Madden, a former Madison House volunteer for Cavs in the Classroom, as she represents Team USA in swimming the 400-meter freestyle, 800-meter freestyle, and 4x200-meter freestyle relay. Paige won a silver medal in the 4x200-meter freestyle relay at the Tokyo games in 2020. Go Hoos!
Madison House remains dedicated to slowing the spread of COVID-19 and protecting the health and safety of our student volunteers, staff, faculty, and Charlottesville community partners and neighbors. Our goal is to especially keep the Charlottesville community safe from harm. With this in mind, the Madison House building will be closed for the fall 2020 semester. The following guidelines have been put in place until further notice…
“I realized I hadn’t devoted enough time giving back to the Charlottesville community, even though I had grown to love this place,” said Anderson, now a first-year UVA Law student. She decided to join the Madison House Big Siblings Program, drawn to the idea of a “deeply personal volunteering experience.”
“The program paired me with Jazhara, who was 5 years old at the time, and through her I met Jojo, who was 2,” she said. Now the kids are 10 and 8, and have known Anderson more than half their lives. “Looking back, it’s amazing how many of my favorite memories involve these two kids.”
Popular Madison House program helps both adult and child Latinx migrants gain academic, applicable skills
For University students, it can be easy to get lost in the UVa bubble. Latinx & Migrant Aid (LAMA), a Madison House program, encourages students to involve themselves within the larger Charlottesville community by engaging with the region’s migrant workers.
With six volunteering sites, eight program coordinators, four community partners and 74 student volunteers, LAMA is a Madison House program dedicated to helping Latinx migrant workers and their children in Charlottesville improve their English speaking and general academic skills.
Ashley Williams is a fourth-year in the College of Arts and Sciences majoring in Human Biology. Ashley volunteers with Madison House's Medical Services program where she has worked in the Outpatient Surgery Center and Emergency Department for 2 years. She is also a Peer Health Educator, works as a Planned Parenthood Generation Action Community Organizer and has also been a CASPCA Foster Parent during her time at UVA. Ashley's other involvements at UVA include her role as a research volunteer in the Department of Neurosurgery Undergraduate Research Volunteer, a Culture of Respect Educator, and as the Mixed Race Student Coalition Outreach Chair.
“Whatever you are passionate about, find a way to get involved and commit to it! I think a lot of undergraduate students (especially pre-meds) get caught up in resume building opportunities instead of giving back in a way that is truly personal and meaningful to them. While giving back in any way is great, it will most likely only be sustainable work if it is important to you. “
Dodds has been working with Madison House’s Latinx and Migrant Aid Program, LAMA, at its Cherry Avenue site. Each week, volunteers work on homework one-on-one with children, in a pair that is sustained throughout the semester to facilitate close bonds between tutor and student. […]
“That is the best and most accurate way to learn about the U.S.’s Latinx community,” she said. “It contextualizes our studies in a way that makes them even more real; having met immigrants who have gone through the struggles we are learning about in class with guest speakers and articles about immigration and xenophobia makes the issues so much more real to use and helps us humanize the statistics we read about in articles.”
Roughly 3,000 students a year volunteer through Madison House. Nearly 40,000 have participated since the center opened in September 1969, according to Tim Freilich (Col ’93, Law ’99), executive director of Madison House and a volunteer there during his undergrad years. In 2018-19 alone, he estimates, students contributed more than 108,000 hours to local projects, from adopt-a-grandparent programs and teacher’s aide positions to patient-care roles at hospitals and free clinics.
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“You can’t learn this type of leadership through a textbook,” Freilich says. “The experience that our 300 student leaders get as they lead their peers is probably the most valuable thing that Madison House does.”
Madison House, the independent, nonprofit volunteer center for UVA students, [was] founded (in its current iteration) shortly before Camille. This year also marks its 50th anniversary.
“My own opinion is that student response to Camille had a great deal to do with subsequent support for Madison House,” Casteen wrote. “It had existed before Camille, and its people had always had their own active lives, but the work following Camille made everyone grow up very quickly.
“Campus Compact came along two decades later. Madison House and its volunteers invented their model on their own.” It’s a model that has worked well over the last half-century.
“Madison House has been what its creators and student volunteers hoped it would be – a catalyst for action by students to benefit surrounding communities and a constructive force in the lives of people living in communities around us,” Casteen wrote.
Madison House Alumna Discusses Food Justice
Shantell Bingham is Program Director of the Charlottesville Food Justice Network at City Schoolyard Garden, sits on the board of the Charlottesville Alliance for Black Male Achievement, chairs the Human Rights Commission and is a Dalai Lama Fellowship recipient. That list is just a few of her achievements. The UVa graduate and North Carolina native goes to work every day with one goal in mind: end food inequality and make sure everyone in the community has access to healthy and nutritious food.
“Right now that’s not the case,” Bingham said. “People of low income and of color have less access to healthy food options than others, for a number of reasons. That needs to change. I’m part of a collaborative movement that can make that happen.”
Eight Madison House Volunteers Receive Fulbright Scholarships:
Shree Baphna
“I think of it as a way for me to understand the power and value behind immersion,” Baphna said. “My future career in public health may involve attempting to understand the experience of other people so that I can figure out what is the best way to help them access the resources they need. For that, I need to have knowledge on how to best communicate with them. More so than that, I must learn how to understand the people I am working with so as to respect who they are and where they come from.”
Corinne Singh, an anthropology major, received the Community Service Award. Early in her undergraduate career, Singh learned that the Charlottesville Free Clinic lacked clinicians to draw blood samples. In response, Singh trained for and earned a phlebotomy certificate and began volunteering weekly at the clinic, serving a critical need. She also has inspired fellow students to become involved with Madison House’s Special Olympics program and with the emergency department at Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital.
“The Charlottesville community is healthier and better off thanks to her service,” [trustee Mariana Brazao] stated.
She is a researcher working in labs in the biology, biomedical engineering and neurological surgery departments. Also a Madison House volunteer, she is a founder and head program director of the Creative Learning After School and Summer Program; a program director with Madison House Medical Services; a member of the Madison House HELP Line Outreach Team….
[During Alita’s] first semester, she ventured to Madison House, the independent, nonprofit volunteer center for UVA students.
“When I found Rise Together [through Madison House], I felt like their initiative, and just talking about my experiences and topics like bullying, was important to [the students],” she said. “I thought it was a really great initiative that I was glad to be a part of.”
The tabling event was the first of its kind and featured a series of stress-relieving activities.
Students stopped by South Lawn over the course of three hours Thursday afternoon to participate in a “Mental Health on the Lawn” event. Hosted by Madison House’s Help Line, If You’re Reading This and National Alliance on Mental Illness on Grounds — three student organizations dedicated to providing students with the resources and help they need for a wide variety of situations relating to mental health and mental illness — the event focused on promoting a healthy and transparent mental health culture on Grounds.
This past Saturday, April 13, hundreds of University students came out to participate in the Madison House BIG Event. Through service-oriented activities at various locations around Charlottesville, the BIG Event promotes campus and community unity as students come together for one day to express their gratitude for the support from the surrounding community.
The event was focused on celebrating Baddeliyanage’s memories and positive impacts on the community.
The University community hosted a “Celebration of Life” event Sunday morning in Old Cabell Hall for Rehan Baddeliyanage, the fourth-year Engineering student who unexpectedly passed away in an accident over spring break. The remembrance event was followed by a reception in the McIntire School of Commerce’s Art Gallery and Courtyard. Approximately 200 people were in attendance.
More than 200 volunteers spent the day working at one of 29 job sites as part of the fifth annual BIG Event, a one-day event sponsored by Madison House, the independent, nonprofit UVA student volunteer center.
Although University students regularly spend time on community service throughout the year, working through Madison House and other programs, the annual event brings out a concentrated group effort every spring. Started in 2015, it’s one day when students come together to express their gratitude for the surrounding community and its ongoing support.
Fourth-year College student Alex Cintron is the first Latinx Student Council president in the University’s history.
As the first Latinx Student Council president in the University’s history Cintron said that, while he felt uncomfortable in some environments which the position required him to engage with, his perspective empowered him to act differently than previous Student Council presidents.
“This is my form of resisting what has been the normal narrative for Student Council president,” Cintron said.
