Christin Ivey listened to music pumped out of her minivan’s speakers and took her paintbrush to a pressure-washed, wooden home exterior Monday.

Ivey, a Georgia College & State University liberal studies junior, started her spring break only a few miles from the beach, but a world away from the care-free attitude of college spring break goers to the nation’s beaches this year. Ivey is part of a 23-person team of GCSU students and staff working in Ocean Springs, Miss., to repair and rebuild homes devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

“We’re just out here listening to music and having a really good time,” Ivey said. “It’s really great to see everyone out here working together.”

By 10:30 a.m. she and her fellow volunteers had pressure washed and nearly finished painting the first of three homes assigned to them by a state-wide joint operation between Episcopal and Lutheran churches located at Camp Victor in Ocean Springs.

This week’s alternate spring break for students involved in the American Democracy Project, a national program sponsored locally by the university’s Coverdell Institute, is the second for GCSU students, Gregg Kaufman, Coverdell Institute director, said.

“Last year we went to Port Charlotte, Fla. It had been affected by five different hurricanes and tropical storms prior to Hurricane Katrina, and they were still rebuilding [when it hit],” Kaufman said. “Ocean Springs and the surrounding area was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. There are still homes that require gutting to prepare for rebuilding. They’re doing everything from debris clearing to new construction, to putting on new roofs to hanging dry wall.”

Participation in this year’s ADP spring break volunteer work is up from only eight members last year.

One of those students new to the ADP’s spring break is Chris O’Quinn, a GCSU senior in political science.

O’Quinn understands the extent of the devastation wrought to the Gulf Coast region by Hurricane Katrina.

“I’ve got family who live in Louisiana. I heard all the stories about what was going on around here, and I wanted to come back down,” the senior said. “I remember when I was a kid driving through and seeing all these beautiful plantations and mansions, but driving through New Orleans afterward all I saw was rubble.”

Organizers at Camp Victor, where the GCSU group is staying, told volunteers during orientation that in the three years after Hurricane Katrina tore through Mississippi and other Gulf Coast states that only about 20 percent of Mississippi homes damaged by the hurricane have been repaired, Kaufman said.

Kaufman and his students with the ADP received the assistance of a local energy company, Tri-County Electric Membership Corporation Foundation, for fuel costs for the trip to Ocean Springs.

This week’s spring break volunteer efforts in Ocean Springs epitomize ADP’s mission.

“The American Democracy Project promotes civic engagement and making a positive difference in community life. We help students strengthen their civic and leadership skills,” Kaufman said. “We hope that through this experience, students will provide the leadership in the future for other programs under their guidance to do things that will help and strengthen — and in some cases rebuild — communities.”