By Andrea Uhde
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Thanks to a group of young volunteers, 69-year-old Betty Ingram of Mount Healthy is getting the wheelchair ramp she has needed for more than a year.

"Maybe (now) I can get out and go down the sidewalk or something," Ingram said of the ramp, which will extend from her back door to her driveway.

Some of the 265 junior high and high school students, with some adults, are in Cincinnati this week, digging dirt and doing carpentry work her Bernard Avenue home.

The volunteers are part of the "World Changers" program, a national initiative of the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention that supplies services to low-income, elderly and disabled people across the nation each year.

The program, which has volunteers in Loveland, Lockland and Mount Healthy, has come to Cincinnati for the second year.

The volunteers, who will be in Cincinnati through Saturday, come from states across the nation, including Alaska, Tennessee and North Carolina.

"It's a good example, it keeps me in line," said Andrew Clark, 20, who came from Atlanta to work on Ingram's ramp. "It's cool doing stuff for people when they can't do it for themselves."

It's Clark's third year with "World Changers."

Volunteers pay about $245 to participate in one of the 82 construction and community service projects across the nation. They paint, put roofing on homes and put up siding, among other tasks. In Cincinnati, they're working on 21 homes.

Each night, volunteers gather for worship services. They spread the Gospel and talk to residents of the homes and their neighbors about the Bible.

E-mail auhde@enquirer.com