Alternate service trips allow students to volunteer during spring break

While some students party on beaches during spring break, others will be donating their time. The Center for Civic Engagement is hosting a variety of alternative service trips during the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s spring break in March. The trips are open to all students, staff and faculty.

“We try to provide students with a safe, healthy, service-oriented trip over their major breaks,” said Linda Moody, director of service learning for the Center for Civic Engagement. From March 17 to March 23, students will travel to Kansas City, Mo., Joplin, Mo., Pine Ridge, S.D., Denver and Minneapolis. Moody said students can expect to dedicate 28 to 32 hours to service.

The trips will be service-oriented during the day and will be focused on reflections during the evenings, said Alicia Dominguez, project coordinator at the Center for Civic Engagement . Those who travel to Kansas City will be working with Operation Breakthrough, a non-profit daycare and social services organization, said Abby Sjogren, a student worker for the Center for Civic Engagement and a senior child, youth and family science major.

Sjogren said Operation Breakthrough works with children in poverty and provides daycare services as well as mentoring and tutoring opportunities. The trip to Joplin will focus on helping rebuild homes that were destroyed by a tornado in May 2011 said Anna Pressler, a student worker with the Center for Civic Engagement and an educational administration graduate student. The center will be working with Relief Spark, a national disaster relief association.

“Last fall we were helping a lot with clean up,” Pressler said, but now the community is looking to rebuild. The group traveling to Pine Ridge will be working with elementary school students and teachers with programs, reading and playing, Sjogren said. The Denver trip will be one of the most popular trips, in Sjogren’s opinion. The group traveling there will be working with Habitat for Humanity to help build homes. “It’s a lot of hard manual labor and people actually like that,” Sjogren said.

Students traveling to Minneapolis will be working at Camp Heartland, which was created for children with HIV and AIDS, according to Sjogren. Sjogren said they will also be working with students from Ohio State University to help prepare the camp for the summer. “It’ll be fun to be working alongside them,” she said. The service trips are meant to help other communities, Pressler said, but it’s also about bringing back what is learned. Dominguez said her first service trip to New Orleans inspired her to work more intimately with service trip planning. “I was just so impacted,” she said. “It was very educational and the diversity on the trips, just within the students that go, is really eye-opening.

“The cost of the trips will range between $225 and $280, Moody said, and will cover transportation, lodging, food, a T-shirt and most educational and cultural activities during the trip. There will be informational sessions in the Center for Civic Engagement in the Nebraska Union, Room 222 today at noon and Feb. 2 at 5 p.m., Moody said. Applications are due Feb. 10. Dominguez encourages all students to take a service trip. “I don’t think there’s a better high than a natural high.”

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