Students Fan Out for Alternative Spring Break Volunteerism
Contact: Sean Campbell (207) 423-3983; (sean.campbell@umit.maine.edu)
ORONO — Instead of heading for warm-weather beaches or ski and snowboarding vacations, about 100 University of Maine students will be packing their bags for a week of volunteer work in six states from Virginia to Texas as part of the longstanding Alternative Spring Break program.
Seven groups of about a dozen students each will spend time Feb. 25-March 7 doing at least 40 hours of community service, and some will do more, says student Sean Campbell, a co-coordinator of Alternative Spring Break at UMaine with student Michael Cronin.
Two groups are heading to New Orleans, one to volunteer with Project Lazarus, a facility that provides free housing and support to individuals suffering from HIV or AIDS. A second group will work with the Saint Bernard’s Project outside New Orleans, were they’ll be reconstructing houses damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Another group heads to work with Hands on Mississippi in Gulfport, where they’ll do disaster relief work by volunteering at rebuilding sites and in soup kitchens.
A fourth group will be off to Chesterfield, Va. to work with individuals with developmental disabilities or autism. They’ll work directly with Camp Baker, part of the Greater Richmond ARC, and will lead programs, clean up the camp and help out wherever else they are needed. A fifth group is scheduled to arrive in Nashville to volunteer at the Martha O’Bryan Center to work with underprivileged families and youth in the community.
Students from UMaine also will work with the Florida Sea Base on Lower Matecumbe Key cleaning up beaches, restoring trails and revitalizing damaged ecosystems, and with the Child Crisis Center of El Paso, Texas, where they plan to interact with children and help out at the center with maintenance work during the week.
Other student volunteer groups traveling during spring break include members of UMaine’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders, heading to help the village of Dulce Vivir in Honduras with clean water and sanitation work, and students in UMaine Rotaract, who plan to help with Habitat for Humanity projects in San Francisco.
Alternative Spring Break activities are coordinated through the university’s Bodwell Center for Service and Volunteerism. The center’s mission is to create civic-mindedness by building an engaged campus through the promotion of service learning and volunteerism by students, faculty and staff to strengthen local, national and global communities.