Over the course of 10 days this spring break, 69 Dartmouth students from a range of class years, interests and backgrounds will take part in the Tucker Foundation's Alternative Spring Break program and embark on six different service trips across North America.
In addition to participating in community service projects in each of their respective locations, the student-led trips aim to facilitate genuine interaction with the communities they work with and to help students understand how service fits into their lives in the long term, according to Tucker Ward '12, co-leader of the ASB trip that will travel to the Dominican Republican this year.
"The point of trips is not making a huge change, but rather expanding your view and coming back frustrated and with the impetus to improve problems within the paradigm," Rena Sapon-White '14, Ward's co-leader, said.
Ward and Sapon-White will take 10 students and an advisor with them to a farming community called "Batey Libertad" in the Dominican Republic where they will build two houses, Ward said. The students have been invited to stay in the homes of several community members.
Alan Salas '13, co-leader of the environmental justice-focused ASB to West Virginia, also said that ASB trips are less about direct action than about reflection.
"It's more about what you learn and what you take away from it," he said. "It's more about the connection you make to the people you are serving, how you change and grow as a person and how you see things differently afterward."
Salas and his co-leader Dana Niu '13 will take their group to an economically disadvantaged region of West Virginia to serve areas affected by mountaintop removal a practice that uses explosives to blow the tops off of mountains in order to remove coal underneath, Salas said.
While ASB trips often prove enlightening experiences for the students who participate, this year's ASB student director Tasneem Khalid '12 said it can be difficult to ensure the trips are as equally beneficial to the communities with which they work. Students must bring a sense of humility with them and acknowledge that they do not have the skills to transform the respective communities they are traveling to in 10 days, she said.
Irvin Gomez '14, co-leader of this year's trip to Florida, which will focus on migrant worker issues, said that such humility was an important part of his ASB trip to Florida last year. He said that while completing the assigned reading and attending the weekly educational sessions held by ASB leaders during Winter term, it was easy to view migrant workers as "victims" or "others."
"But when you physically meet those people, you give them a face," he said. "Instead of feeling like, They need my help,' you think, Wow, they have been through so much,' and you feel very humbled."
The logistical and educational aspects of the trips are largely overseen by the students who lead them, according to Khalid. Although the student leaders, all of whom are previous participants on the trips they are leading, have past itineraries to pull from, they must re-establish relationships with organizations they wish to work with, organize lodging, run educational sessions and lead application and selection processes. They may look to their volunteer advisors for help but the involvement of such advisors varies from trip to trip, according to the leaders.
Ariel Shapiro '13, Alice Liou '13 and Geo Cuevas '14, co-leaders of the Faith in Action ASB, had to create an itinerary from scratch because their trip, usually held in San Francisco, was transferred to Washington, D.C. this year to cut costs and include a greater number of students, according to trip advisor and Tucker Foundation Assistant Chaplain Kurt Nelson.
"We're also going to D.C. this year to see how poverty, service and faith are intertwined in a different context, especially with all of the policy being made in the D.C. area," Liou said. "There is a stark difference between the haves' and the have-nots' in D.C. because it's the center of American politics."
The Faith in Action group will work with several non-profit organizations, including Habitat for Humanity, various soup kitchens and food distributors and a safe house for Muslim women and children, according to Liou. Although much of the discussion during past trips has related to faith, students who go on Faith in Action trips come from a number of different religious backgrounds, according to Shapiro.
"We look at the concept of community and how that is played out in faith and what we feel our faith compels us to do in terms of service and what other reasons we feel compelled to serve our community," she said. "We talked about how our faiths say different or the same things and how we can use those differences as a strength."
Mandy Brasher '12 and Edgar Sandoval '14, co-leaders of the Kentucky ASB that will explore rural health care and poverty, said they, too, sought to select a group of students who came from different backgrounds and perspectives, but all participants displayed a passion for the issues faced by people living in rural Kentucky in their applications. Applicants did not need specific knowledge regarding health or related topics, only a vested interest in relevant issues, Brasher said.
Brasher and Sandoval's group will volunteer in impoverished Kentucky communities at Laurel Mission, a community center; David's School, an alternative high school for students experiencing academic or social difficulty at a nearby public school; and a local nursing school, according to Brasher.
"We're going to go down there and do service work, but it's not just doing service work, it's reflecting on the work and your place in that community," Sandoval said. "You help [the community members], and they let you into their lives."
Aleschia Hyde '12 and Desiree Deschenie '11 will lead a group of students to the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Reservation in Eagle Butte, S.D. according to the ASB website. Students will work and live at the Cheyenne River Youth Project, a "community-based organization that provides after-school activities for area youth and teens, as well as various kinds of support to community and families," according to the website. The students will provide additional staffing for the Cheyenne River Youth Project and will lead a college awareness night for teens with whom the organization works.
When Ward and Sapon-White, co-leaders of the ASB to the Dominican Republic, said that while each individual's experience will be different, they want their trip members to leave with a newfound consciousness that includes community and service.
"We hope it contextualizes service, and what we're trying to get out of our education here," Ward said. "We want our tripees to connect with someone they meet on the trip and understand there he or she comes from, what their daily lives are like, what their hopes and dreams are and how they can realize those."
ASB trips are funded in large part by the Tucker Foundation and donations made to the foundation by individual donors, according to Khalid. Each trip is required to raise approximately $500, and each student is asked to pay for $200 of the trip's total cost, though scholarships are available, she said.
Sapon-White is a member of The Dartmouth Staff.
