LoveWorks 1996-2006

LoveWorks is a program run through the Office of Spiritual Development. The program creates concrete, short-term (2 weeks or so) aid projects to other countries, usually to third-world countries, and organizes groups of PLNU students, staff and faculty to execute those projects. Projects can be connected to a specific local church that can help identify a need and connect the working team to local inhabitants who provide guidance, information, and a human context. Other projects may connect, in similar fashion, to an organization already working full-time in the area. Most of these trips take place during the summer, but some can happen over a somewhat elongated spring break.

LoveWorks is a program that merges our mission to create in students an attitude of service and our educational goal of sending students into new cultural environments that will stretch their mind and open them up to the otherness of the rest of the world. It should be clear from the data below that this has been a very successful program, for many years. Nonetheless, two factors have arisen to reduce the number of students applying to participate in a LoveWorks trip. The first is the September 11 incident and its aftermath of fear and worry. The second is the number of student seeking to study abroad for longer periods of time. The fact that numbers in the LoveWorks trips have been able to stabilize after 9/11 and even begin to increase while the numbers of students engaged in foreign study has greatly increased indicates that some form of work abroad has taken root in the PLNU student culture.

The LoveWorks trips that have taken place over the past 10 years are as follows:

1996 : 10 groups
Albania
Australia
Brazil
Costa Rica
Guatemala
Israel
Ivory Coast
Russia
Swaziland
Zambia

1997: 9 groups
Australia
Cambodia
Costa Rica
Dominican Republic
Hawaii
Kazakhstan
Russia
South Africa
Urban America

1998: 7 groups
Australia
Bulgaria
Fiji
Hawaii
Lebanon
Rwanda
Zimbabwe/Zambia

1999: 8 groups
Guam
Hawaii
India
Israel
Israel Men’ BB
Portugal
Puerto Rico
Rwanda

2000: 9 groups
Australia
Costa Rica
Fiji
Hawaii Interns
India
Papua, New Guinea
Russia
Rwanda
Turkey

2001: 12 groups
Brazil
Fiji
Hawaii
Honduras
Kenya
Kosovo/Macedonia
Kyrgyzstan
Madagascar
Mexico
Philippines
Rwanda
Tanzania

2002: 5 groups
Casa Robles
Hawaii Interns
Kailua
Kona
Pajarito Mesa

2003: 6 groups
El Salvador
Ireland
Madagascar
Papua, New Guinea
Rwanda
Zimbabwe

2004: 6 groups
Hawaii
Malawi
Paraguay
Poland
Solomon Islands
Tanzania

2005: 8 groups
Chiapas
Ecuador
Haiti
Hawaii
India
Kenya, Uganda
Nigeria
Vanuatu

2006: (projected) 11 groups
Ethiopia
Hawaii
Malawi
Peru
Rwanda
South Africa
Sri Lanka
Suriname
Tanzania
Urban America
Venezuela