Many students chose to use their Spring Break to volunteer in another area of the country or world through the Community Service Center's Alternative Break. Students had the opportunity to travel to Central Appalachia in Radford, Virginia, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the United States-Mexican border this year.
Shoshanna Sumka, director of the Alternative Break program, has been managing the program for eight months and oversaw recent trips to Zambia, Thailand and China.
"These trips are short-term ways for students to experience things that they wouldn't have experienced on their own," Sumka said. She also said that the alternative break trips are a good way for students to learn outside of the classroom about national and global issues. "Students have such a transformative experience that they are inspired to activism after the trips are over," Sumka said.
The Appalachia Spring Break trip took students to Radford, Virginia to work with the community-development organization Beans and Rice. Students helped run the after-school program at a subsidized housing complex, attended workshops and volunteered at Habitat for Humanity.
Elan Comegys-Brisbane, a sophomore in the School of Communication, said she had a great experience on the Appalachia trip. "I am so glad I went on this trip. It was a chance for me to step outside my comfort zone," Comegys-Brisbane said. "The Beans and Rice people were a privilege to work with."
Those who traveled to Belize stayed in a Garifuna community located in a coastal city. The students volunteered with a women's empowerment organization and worked with an elementary school to help educate the children about HIV and AIDS. They were immersed in the Garifunan culture through food, music, and dance. The students also had the opportunity to meet with the National Garifuna Council.
Students on the Guatemala trip worked closely with Pura Vida. They lived and worked on a coffee farm to physically experience what the labor is like for the farmers. They also learned about eco-tourism-the idea of allowing tourism to stimulate an economy while still allowing minimal impact on the environment.
In Honduras, students learned first-hand about the Maquila factories and the working conditions of the laborers. The students worked with the Organization for Youth Empowerment and attended advocacy meetings in Tegucigalpa with representatives.
The Nicaragua trip focused on issues of labor and free trade. Participants attended advocacy meetings and had the opportunity to see a worker-owned factory, where profits are divided evenly among the workers. The students also contributed volunteer work and slept in the homes of rural schoolteachers and farmers.
Students who participated in the United States-Mexican border trip first went to Tucson, Ariz., and crossed the border to Mexico. They met with groups that assist immigrants, border patrol and with an anti-immigrant group called the Middlemen.
"I think the thing that took me back was that I didn't hate the border patrol officers or local law enforcement as I had imagined I would, but was able to see a human side to their views as well," said Laura Taylor, a freshman in the School of International Service who went on the U.S-Mexican border trip. "I was reminded to never go into a situation assuming you know what the 'other side' will say," she said.
Other campus organizations also offered alternative breaks to students, such as the AU Methodist Church, which visited the Cherokee Nations Indian reservation in North Carolina.
This is the third year that the AU Methodist community organized a trip to the Cherokee Nation.
"The week we spend in Cherokee is always a mix of work-service and learning about Cherokee history and culture," said AU Chaplin Rev. Mark Schaefer. "We hoped for students to be able to encounter a different culture right here at home."
Schaefer said the group aided an autistic boy and his family and participated in a tribal ritual, among other activites.
"I think that students gained a lot in terms of their understanding of the Cherokee but also in terms of their understandings of themselves," Schaefer said.
