Students Continue Sandy Recovery

Montclair State University continues to be part of the Jersey Shore’s ongoing recovery from Superstorm Sandy.

This past summer, a group of 12 Montclair State students, led by Krystal Woolston of Service-Learning and Community Engagement, worked to rebuild a home in Keansburg, N.J., that had been ravaged by the storm.

The students worked with a non-profit group called A Future With Hope, formed through the Middletown Methodist Church specifically to address Sandy recovery. “We slept on church classroom floors on air mattresses or cots and showered in nearby gym facilities,” says Woolston, adding that members of the church showed the Montclair State group generous hospitality, offering their home showers to use and throwing a pool party for them at the end of the week.
In order for the home to be habitable again, it needed to be completely gutted and redone. Woolston’s group hung fresh drywall and spackled the new walls.

“This is an area that has been greatly affected,” Woolston says, noting that the borough of about 10,000 received little media attention after the storm. “We plan to continue our Sandy recovery efforts,” she adds. “We’re looking into doing a service trip again over the winter and spring breaks.”