This spring, hundreds of Vanderbilt University students will trade in golden beaches and tropical locales for poverty-stricken rural areas and depressed inner cities. They will exchange frivolous fun in the sun for community service and experiences that many alumni consider life-altering as part of the university‘s Alternative Spring Break Program March 3-7.
The students will travel to 35 volunteer sites across the United States, Canada, Mexico and Guatemala as they engage in community service and learn about the problems faced by members of communities with whom they otherwise might have had little or no direct contact.
This year‘s participants will experience life on the border, working in Mexico by day and staying in Brownsville, Texas, at night to observe what a difference a few miles can make; serve up meals and emotional support to returning residents in Buras, La., where Hurricane Katrina made landfall; live and serve at a homeless shelter in Washington, D.C., before taking “the Urban Plunge” and living homeless for 48 hours; and shadow family physicians and make house visits with nurses in the rural Appalachian community of White Oak, Tenn.
Twenty year ago, four undergraduates at Vanderbilt wanted to participate in a community service opportunity but also wanted to travel during spring break. After graduating, two of those individuals founded Break Away in 1991, a national nonprofit organization now based in Tallahassee, Fla., that acts as an umbrella organization for Alternative Spring Break efforts at more than 100 universities across the country.
Break Away estimates that 350,000 students across the U.S. will participate in an alternative spring break experience. Last year, more than 350 Vanderbilt students traveled to 31 destinations in 2006 as part of Alternative Spring Break.
Media Contact: Melissa Pankake, (615) 322-NEWS
melissa.r.pankake@vanderbilt.edu