“We care” could easily become the motto for those monks and students at St. Meinrad Archabbey and Seminary who have decided that the command to ‘be their brother’s keeper” is more than a pulpit platitude.

To prove it, three young men from the Archdiocese of Atlanta, and others began a program in February 1965, which has grown into today’s Cooperative Action for Community Development (CACD) program.

Actively involved in the program are John S. Adamski, a second theologian at St. Meinrad School of Theology and a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Atlanta; Robert Augustine is financial director and Bishop is cochairman of the Branchville Jobs Corps.

The purpose of CACD is to supplement the activities performed through existing professional organization such as the Community Action Program and the Rural Area Development. The five main areas of CACD activity are the physically and mentally handicapped, the aged and aging, recreation, remedial reading, and the Job Corps Training Center located in Brancville, Ind.

This year volunteers on the physically and mentally handicapped committee work primarily in assisting four special education classes in Tell City, Richland City, and Cannelton, Ind. This program reaches fifty-six children who can benefit from formal education or other training. Besides holding tutoring sessions in reading, diction, and basic numbers, volunteers also lead the children in song and recreational activities which emphasize physical and mental coordination. Field trips to the zoo, library, and other places of interest to the children are sponsored by the CACD.

Visits throughout the area to nursing homes for elderly people are made twice weekly by the committee on the aged and aging. The committeemen participate with the 180 members of these homes in activities that vary from parties to card playing, from hootenannies to neighborly conversation. In exchange for the student companionship, the senior citizens share insights from past experience. This committee, which represents the Indian Commission on the Aged and Aging in Southern Indian, has cooperated in the recent establishment of a Senior Center in Tell City, Indian, and is completing a similar program in Rockport and Troy, Indiana.

The remedial teaching program, the most extensive of the committees, is designed to aid those children in the elementary and secondary schools of the surrounding communities, who, lacking scholastic opportunities or incentive, have fallen behind their companions in classroom work. The teachers work mainly on reading deficiencies since it is the cause of most of the children’s learning problems. Forty committee assistants make possible a low teacher to student ratio of one to four and enables the student to receive much individual help in his areas of greatest difficulty. Once or twice weekly the remedial teacher meets with his pupils for an hour session.

On Monday and Tuesday evenings various members of the CACD go to the Branchville Job Corps Center. Their main activity is in the area of sports and recreation and includes intramural games, soccer and basketball, weightlifting, physical fitness, and arts and crafts for the 100 young men who live there. The collegians also provide special tutoring and discussions in such areas as personal hygiene, mechanical drawing, and speech improvement to ease the problems of social adjustment and self-acceptance of the corpsmen.