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First Posted: 8/23/2013 WILKES-BARRE &#8212; It was break time at the Habitat for Humanity of Wyoming Valley&#8217;s single-family project along Carey Avenue. King&#8217;s College freshman Mike Paniccia wiped sweat from his brow and downed a bottle of water with two newly made friends, also first-year students.
Freshmen and transfer students swarmed Luzerne County on Friday to help the area&#8217;s volunteer and human service organizations. CitySERVE, as they call the volunteerism blitz, is part of the first-year orientation that had about 500 students working at 16 different sites.
They did things such as boxing meals for senior citizens at the Commission on Economic Opportunity&#8217;s Weinberg Food Bank, cleaning barns at The Lands at Hillside Farms and pulling weeds outside the Volunteers in Medicine clinic on Pennsylvania Avenue.
&#8220;It&#8217;s a good way for us to get to know each other,&#8221; said King&#8217;s freshman Craig Lowman, a participant at the Habitat project. Lowman, of Maryland and Paniccia, of Connecticut, met Thursday when new students moved onto campus and stitched together their friendship a little more as they raked topsoil and hung insulation.
At the VA Hospital in Plains Township, about a dozen freshmen led veterans at the Community Living Center in a game of bingo.
Hospital public affairs officer Gail Ziegler said the veterans&#8217; eyes lit up when the college kids arrived. They struck up conversation right away, she said.
Inter-generational interaction is good for students and the veterans, said VA recreational therapist Amie Omalia. The older generation gets to share their experiences with the youngsters and students get first-hand tales about what happened during the wars.
Heather Danishanko, a secondary education student, experienced that give-and-take when she sat next to a veteran of the Vietnam War during bingo. As other students helped veterans in wheelchairs get back to their rooms, Danishanko stopped for a minute with a few fellow freshmen to recount their volunteer experiences.
Danishanko said a thoughtful elderly soldier told her about his love for the French language and, during deployment in Vietnam, he taught French to wealthy Vietnamese who paid him $30 an hour for his tutoring &#8212; an exorbitant mid-century wage. The conversation was enlightening to her, she said, because she never considered that part of history.
King&#8217;s College spokesman John McAndrew said the mandatory first-year volunteerism, a part of orientation since 1999, works two-fold. &#8220;We feel it&#8217;s a good way for the students to get to know the area and get to know the commitment King&#8217;s has to the community,&#8221; he said.

King’s freshmen introduced to Valley via volunteerism