Dartmouth Students Volunteer Hands-On on Alternative Spring Break Trips
For many college kids, spring break is a time to catch up on sleep and “The Vampire Diaries” at home or relax with a fruity drink in a tropical locale. Yet many Dartmouth students gave up their opportunity this spring to kick back over interim in favor of giving back to the community.
Spring break service-learning trips, also known as Alternative Spring Break programs, provide an opportunity for students to volunteer hands-on for a week in a variety of locations. Many ASB programs are student-run and funded by the Tucker Foundation. Tucker trips for this year included both local and overseas opportunities that focused on a wide range of issues. For example, participants could perform environmental outreach to communities affected by strip mining in West Virginia or teach English in the Dominican Republic.
Karen Wai ’14 said she enjoyed her experience mentoring high school students in Hartford. Her trip, ran by the Dartmouth Global Leadership Program, focused on teaching local students skills such as applying to college, SAT/ACT prep and job applications.
“One of the biggest things that I got out of [the trip] was that I was really able to connect with the high school students,” Wai said. “I felt like they saw me not only as a resource or a mentor, but as a friend.”
Kiko Lam ’14 continued her existing passion for service on the Florida ASB trip. Lam worked with the Coalition for Immokalee Workers and other local NGOs to provide educational opportunities for immigrant agricultural workers in Immokalee, Fl., paralleling her previous experience working with immigrants in her home country of Hong Kong. On her trip, she helped tutor workers in English, cared of workers’ children at a daycare center and even participated in a protest march at the superstore Publix in an attempt to raise immigrant salaries.
“I wanted to get out of the Dartmouth bubble,” Lam said. “I love this school, but I feel like people are trapped in all this academic work [at Dartmouth]. I don’t know whether people are aware of issues that happen outside this campus, but I don’t think people talk about them a lot.”
Both Lam and Wai cited their experiences as important to their personal growth.
“I think it serves as a really good way for Dartmouth students to connect further with the community and reach out and do some community service,” Wai said. She also called her experience on the Hartford trip “eye-opening.”
“These short-term service trips definitely have their limitations...I definitely think I have gained more off of this than I gave [to the trip],” Lam said.
ASB applications are available through the Tucker Foundation every fall.