Courtesy of Mark KiefferSpring break is on its way. This nine-day vacation has always been thought of as a highlight of the collegiate experience. The first thoughts that come to mind are probably beaches, bathing suits and generally bumming around.
But some Wash. U. students have decided to go with alternative spring break plans that are not your typical week of fun in the sun. These students have found ways to make a difference over break and to have a great time doing it.
Junior Tammy Balick is taking her week of vacation and running with it-all the way to Madagascar. This semester, she has been participating in a program called the Madagascar Community Development and Problem Solving Initiative, a community service project to help raise the standard of living of the people in the Mahabo village of Madagascar. Come spring break, she will take two weeks to travel to the village and implement several programs there, with the help of program founders at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Primarily, Balick’s group will be working with the Blessing Basket project, which is designed to give women weaving jobs. While in Madagascar, Balick will be conducting interviews to see if the project she worked on all semester was successful in improving the villagers’ standards of living. She is particularly interested to see if there will be a transfer of power in this traditionally patriarchal society because women in this project are now the ones earning the wages.
For Balick, this alternative spring break promises several benefits.
“It’s basically international consulting, which might be a long-term life goal of mine,” she said.
She added that she has always had a fascination with Africa and a love of travel, so this was the perfect destination for her spring break. A 36-hour plane ride and six inoculations didn’t daunt her at all.
“It’s nice to be cut off and immersed in a different culture,” said Balick.
Many other students have also traveled to participate in service trips for past spring breaks. Two years ago, just after Hurricane Katrina, junior Mark Kieffer decided to spend his break volunteering with Overflow, a religious student group on campus.
The group drove from St. Louis to New Orleans, where they were housed for free in a previously flooded hotel that was open only for volunteers. Kieffer and fellow volunteers were responsible for gutting houses so that they could be rebuilt. The process of gutting houses is expensive, so his team’s work was a sizeable relief for the homeowners-and it also proved to be a stress reliever for Kieffer and other volunteers.
“You’re destroying something to make it better,” he said, adding that taking a sledgehammer to a wall can be very relaxing.
A homeowner showed her gratitude to the volunteers in one of the few ways she could: by cooking a meal for them.
Not only did the trip provide a chance for students to do community service, it was also a means by which they could experience the city and culture of New Orleans during their time off. Kieffer described his search for some good jazz music, one of the city’s claims to fame.
“Downtown [New Orleans] was cool,” said Kieffer. “You got a feeling for how beautiful it was.”
Sophomore Danielle Hayes has been on a number of service trips in the past, including a student-run Campus Y trip last spring break to Belize that was focused on ecotourism. She noticed the tension there between ecological interests and the well-being of the people who lived there.
“There’s a lot of complexities that you don’t see until you’re there,” said Hayes.
For this spring break, Hayes is the program leader for a Campus Y service trip to a Native American reservation in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. There, the group will be teaming up with other volunteers, and their task will be to make bunk beds for children at the reservation.
Hayes finds that these service trips provide a great way to learn about herself and about a new place.
“I’m interested in hearing the real story,” she said with regard to life on a Native American reservation.
Additionally, she feels these trips are a great way to do something productive in her free time and meet great people along the way.
“Those four weeks [of past service trips] were some of the best weeks of my life,” said Hayes.
I once had a discussion with a teaching assistant about whether or not people-and particularly students at Wash. U.-have a social obligation to give back to their communities. Whether or not you believe we should, it’s something worth considering while you still have the luxury of free time. You can’t change the world in a week, but you can do something meaningful and still have a great time.
As Hayes said, “You come back inspired.”