Mount Mercy student to spend year volunteering

CEDAR RAPIDS - Monica Kordick says she always has had a desire to help others.

'We always had social workers in and out of the house,” said Kordick, who was adopted from Guatamala when she was 3 and raised in West Des Moines. 'A caseworker worked with my sister and I and would check in on how we were doing.”

Her mother also is a social worker who works with domestic violence victims, Kordick said.

An interest in pursuing social work herself, as well as a desire for a smaller school, led Kordick to Mount Mercy University in Cedar Rapids. This year, with graduation nearing, she began looking into in the Peace Corps. But she wasn't sure she wanted to commit to the two-year assignment.

That's when she came upon the Mercy Volunteer Corps, a one-year program affiliated with the Sisters of Mercy. After talking with her academic advisor, Joni Howland, as well a former Mount Mercy student who had taken part in the program, she decided to apply.

'My whole life I've always said I want to travel and help people so I get to do that now, and that's awesome,” Kordick said.

The first week of August, Kordick will leave for Sacramento, Calif., a place she's never seen. Once there, she will work with homeless women and children for an organization called Loaves & Fishe. Mercy Volunteer Corps will pay for her housing, and she will receive a $500 stipend for food and other needs, she said.

'I want to work with kids and the homeless population really interests me,” Kordick said. 'If I enjoy it I will most likely apply for the Peace Corps later. I want to do it before I have a family.”

Although she has traveled extensively, Kordick said she is not used to having her parents so far away, but she think she can adjust to it.

'I don't know anybody out there. It's my first time going to a place where I don't know anybody,” Kordick said.

'It's part of growing up.”