Alternative Spring Break
By Sean Dinno, Campus Relations Coordinator, Service Learning Program
UO students at work in a kitchen in the Tenderloin District during the 2009 Alternative Break trip to San Francisco.
For the third year in a row, the Service Learning Program (SLP) is expanding its opportunities for students to participant in Alternative Break experiences. This Spring Break, the SLP is offering four Alternative Spring Break (ASB) trips to San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles and Eastern Oregon. Over the last two years, ASB participants have traveled to San Francisco and San Diego to investigate urban poverty and immigration. But as interest increases, so does the demand for more trips.
As a first new location for Alternative Spring Break, students will travel to Los Angeles to work with at-risk youth. Volunteering at after school programs and youth centers, participants will directly interact with and mentor teens. Fostering academic achievement and serving as role models, participants show teens that college is possible. Through providing encouragement and support to these teens, university students learn of the impact their efforts have on the success of each individual.
On the second new trip, UO students will learn firsthand how poverty takes a different form inthe rural setting of Eastern Oregon. Living in Eugene, many students do not have the opportunity to experience life in rural Oregon. Visiting several locations throughout Eastern Oregon around Klamath Falls, Lakeview and Burns, participants will be exposed to various sides of the issue, such as talking with rural farmers, working with youth in low-income areas or working with organizations that support residents in poverty to find family-wage jobs.
This trip is especially unique because it is a joint program with Oregon State. For the first time, Oregon and Oregon State students will work together as a group to investigate rural poverty. As a result of the partnership, students will be able to share different knowledge and skill sets with one another. Through joint awareness and activism, the opportunity arises to collectively address a major state issue.
A staff member from Border Angels talks to students about social justice issues during the 2009 Alternative Break trip to San Diego.
Each Alternative Spring Break trip is an opportunity to dedicate a break to transforming the world. Joining with fellow students, participants make an active commitment to learning and growing through service. Such experiences have lifelong impacts on their participants and the communities in which they serve. As one Alternative Break alum Sheila McGraw said, “These experiences have provided my peers and I with a much deeper knowledge and understanding of the pressing social issues that our generation must face. My experience has shaped who I am, who I will become, and what I am going to do with my life and career.”
This year there is also the opportunity for alumni to meet the students. Each group of students will host an Alternative Break receptions in the city where they are performing service. In Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco the event will take place on the evening of Friday, March 26, 2010. For the rural Oregon trip, the event will take place in Bend at lunchtime on Saturday, March 27, 2010. For more information contact Lisa Fortin at lfortin@uoregon.edu. Help shape a legacy of student service here at the University of Oregon and support Alternative Breaks today.
To find out more about trip details or to learn how you can support Alternative Breaks, please visit our website at serve.uoregon.edu or email us at serve@uoregon.edu.