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.”
Throughout the last 30 years of his life, Robertson championed many causes at the University and related initiatives. He made substantial gifts to the Jefferson Scholars Foundation, the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership, and through his foundation, was behind donations to the student volunteer center Madison House, as well as a $2.2 million “Robertson Innovations in Education” grant supporting research to enhance teaching practices and student learning experiences.
I am always impressed with the intellectual curiosity of so many of my students. But, I am also impressed at how many appreciate their good fortune, gifts and talents and feel determined to share them with those who are less fortunate. Over the years, more and more of my students share with me their plans to seek humanitarian careers.
Also, as a board member, and now the co-chair of the Madison House, I have been impressed by the number of students who dedicate themselves to a number of community programs, while juggling a rigorous academic load.
Graeff, a fourth-year art history major and a recipient of a University of Virginia Arts Award, has taken up the cause of a trio of female artists from the 1980s who she argues have been overlooked.
Aside from her studies, Graeff is a member of Delta Delta Delta sorority’s Beta Sigma chapter. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, she was involved with a Madison House arts organization at Venable Elementary School.
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.”
Sterling Clay landed his dream job. Thanks to his diligence studying in the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce, he’ll start his professional life as a technology consulting analyst with Accenture Federal Services, come graduation this spring.
The IT & Management student served as program director for Madison House’s Creating Assets, Savings & Hope program, which trains undergrads to become volunteer income tax assistants.
CASH is a tax program run by Madison House, the independent volunteer center for UVA students. The program is run in partnership with the local United Way. It is designed to help low-income workers file their taxes and maximize their refunds. “We receive tax documents from local Charlottesville community members making under $57,000 a year,” Hedgecock said. “Then we will prepare the tax forms for them, run them through their refund, make sure it’s checked several times to ensure accuracy and really explain why they are getting a refund or not.”
Since arriving on Grounds, the second-year student has logged serious hours as a Madison House volunteer, leading a local effort to teach citizens how to create résumés and apply for jobs. She’s also a member of the Second Year Council, as well as an intern with the Charlottesville-based Ron Brown Scholar Program, an organization that provides academic resources to underserved black youth.
In recent years, UVA has expanded programs and pathways for incorporating community service into student experience. Some opportunities have grown out of Madison House, the independent student volunteer center – supporting Stephenson’s and other writing courses, for example. The provost’s office and Center for Teaching Excellence are also highly involved.
During the fall semester, University of Virginia students and their counterparts at Ghent University in Belgium took part in a virtual, non-credit course, “Resilience in the Face of Complexity, Uncertainty, and Injustice.”
Madison House, the independent, nonprofit volunteer center for UVA students, partnered with the U.S. Department of State and the Presidential Precinct to host the course, which entailed Zoom meetings and accompanying coursework. The course was part of the International Visitor Leadership Program, an 80-year-old initiative to promote cross-cultural relationships and further U.S. foreign policy goals.
She’s also been participating in Madison House’s Creating Assets, Savings & Hope, or CASH, program as a volunteer income tax assistant since her first year, which she said she enjoys for the opportunity to be directly involved with the greater Charlottesville community.
“CASH helps me recognize the magnitude and privilege of being a student, while recognizing the importance of remembering my background. No matter what professional role I have when I’m older, I will continue to represent underrepresented groups and advocate for them,” she said.
When Shapiro got to UVA, he was scrolling through the website of Madison House – the independent, nonprofit volunteer center for UVA students – looking for volunteering opportunities when he came across HELP Line.
HELP Line is a free and confidential telephone hotline serving UVA and the surrounding area. It is a student-run and student-operated empathetic listening and referral hotline, staffed entirely by anonymous UVA student volunteers.
“I thought, ‘This has got to be the coolest thing ever,’” Shapiro said.
As a first-year student, Loyd got involved with Madison House almost immediately.
“It helped me connect to the community in Charlottesville and have some perspective on my own privilege and feel more like a community member,” she said. “I was not that comfortable in the social scene, in the sorority and fraternity scene. I felt a little bit like fish out of water. … I was a little overwhelmed.
“And so Madison House was a nice way for me to find my people and way of being.”
Once a week, Loyd made a 40-minute drive to Louisa with a fellow volunteer to tutor the teenager.
“I remember being really challenged by her in ways that were important for me to face,” said Loyd, who lost touch with the teen after college. “She would just stand up for herself a lot, kind of like, ‘I don’t want to do that and you have no idea how hard my life is.’
“The students began to think incredibly creatively,” Ochs said. “They anticipated how technology would be used to sustain individuals and communities; they designed texts that could be used for virtual rituals.”
Prior to the pandemic, the students – many working in conjunction with Madison House – had been able to give back to the Charlottesville community in a number of ways, including mentoring young people with autism, volunteering at the Salvation Army and Goodwill, adopting a grandparent, teaching children to read and helping people with taxes.
From there, the students created their own Haggadahs, using the traditional text as their inspiration.
During the rest of her time at UVA, Hoerr hopes to integrate Backpack Buddies into the UVA community, potentially through a collaboration with Madison House.
“We’re so proud of what Lucia has accomplished,” Carter Hoerr said. “Over the past 10 years she has shown both determination and real empathy for the needy kids in our area – two pretty remarkable traits for a kid her age.”
Hoerr wants Backpack Buddies to live on after she graduates.
“My goal is to have a succession plan in place so that Backpack Buddies can continue to run in Charlottesville even without me here watching over it,” she said. “I also hope that wherever I end up I will be able to set up a new branch of Backpack Buddies and continue to expand my nonprofit far and wide.”
Among the many University of Virginia experiences that have shaped Avery Bullock’s professional aspirations, two in particular stand out.
One is a sociology course that Bullock, who earned her undergraduate degree in biology from UVA in 2018 and will complete master’s in public health in May, took during her third year, “The Sociology of Health and Society.” It was one of her favorite sociology courses, and the discussions around how socioeconomic standing influences health felt like a clarion call to the aspiring physician, who will enter medical school in the fall.
“It just captured me,” said Bullock, a Richmond resident who grew up attending UVA football and basketball games. “I decided then to apply for the master’s in public health program before going to medical school.”
Another factor in that decision? Two senior ladies that Bullock met through Madison House’s Adopt a Grandparent program, which pairs UVA students with senior citizens in the Charlottesville community. Bullock has volunteered with the program for six years, meeting with the same two “grandmothers,” both of whom live in a low-income nursing home in Charlottesville.
“They have been crucial to my experience at UVA,” she said.
If there was ever any question about University of Virginia students’ desire to fulfill President Jim Ryan’s mission of the University being both great and good, it was answered in the immediate aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic hitting the commonwealth.
Just a few hours after being required to leave Grounds to quarantine, a whopping 600 students reached out to Madison House – the independent, nonprofit volunteer center for UVA students – to see how they could continue helping the community from a distance during the pandemic.
“I know how amazing UVA students are and how ingrained service is into the culture of our institution,” Rose Cole, director of community engagement at Madison House, said, “but I was surprised by how quickly the numbers climbed.
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.”
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.
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.”
