by Kara Furlong
Spring break traditionally marks a time for college students to hit the ski slopes or lay on the beach, trading the hectic schedule of life on campus for rest and relaxation. During the week of March 3, however, some 300 Vanderbilt University students will stay busy participating in Alternative Spring Break programs at 25 sites across the United States, Mexico and Canada, including two sites in Nashville.

One group of students will volunteer in East Nashville with the Campus for Human Development, Safe Haven, St. Patrick’s Shelter and the Boys and Girls Club of Middle Tennessee. At these locations, they will teach GED classes, serve meals and counsel Nashville’s homeless youth.

Another Nashville site has an all-female group of students working with several organizations that promote the empowerment of women to improve and rehabilitate themselves. Among them is the Magdalene Project, which provides housing, counseling and support to Nashville’s prostitutes who wish to leave the streets, and the YWCA’s Domestic Violence and Abuse Center.

Other students will confront issues as diverse as poverty in Appalachia; cultural clashes within Texas’ Hispanic communities and among Native Americans in Oklahoma and South Dakota; caring for senior citizens in Orlando and the Mississippi Delta; mentoring at-risk youth in Detroit and South Carolina; serving the homeless in Los Angeles and Atlanta; repairing the Appalachian Trail in Virginia; and working with New York City’s AIDS community.

In Monterrey, Mexico, Vanderbilt students fluent in Spanish will work with Las Caritas, a Central American equivalent to the Red Cross. In Toronto, Canada, they will interact with the city’s significant homeless population, many of whom are teenagers or young adults. Alternative Spring Break participants live among those they serve to better understand cross-cultural concerns and mutually promote community values, goals and ideas.

The first Alternative Spring Break at Vanderbilt began in 1986 as a result of students’ desire to step outside the campus and further their education through practical experience and the application of service. Alternative Spring Break projects are completely organized and run by the students. The association’s mission is to promote critical thinking, social action and continued community involvement.

Posted 3/03/03 at 10 a.m.