Students, faculty volunteer for spring break

Instead of partying in Cancun or taking a cruise, nearly 30 University of Nebraska-Lincoln students will spend spring break doing volunteer work with Student Involvement's Alternative Service Break program.

The program provides service trips, not only for spring break, but for fall, winter and summer breaks as well.

"The trip to Galveston in the fall didn't go, because we didn't get the bus full," said Kathleen Maynard, program coordinator of service learning in Student Involvement and program coordinator for Alternative Service Breaks. "So for spring break we decided to plan four trips and instead of taking buses, take vans."

The four destinations included Denver, Kansas City, Mo., Greensburg, Kan. and Taos, N.M., with eight students, along with a student leader and faculty leader going to each place.

There wasn't enough interest in the Denver trip, which would have involved working in homeless shelters and bagging food, so it was canceled a couple of weeks ago, Maynard said.

The other trips are full with five to six students on waiting lists.

"I wanted to do a (Habitat for Humanity) house—that's what we're doing in Taos, N.M.," Maynard said.

"In Kansas City, I wanted to do something with kids, so we are working with Operation Breakthrough, which is a center for 250 kids living under the poverty level who are homeless. Greensburg is tornado recovery. They had a tornado a couple years ago and the town is rebuilding green."

The cost of the trips per student range from $90 to $375.

"I'm amazed by the students who want to go on these," Maynard said. "They don't even care how much it is. The Taos trip was the first one to fill up, and it's the most expensive."

One of those students is Emily Signor, a junior biological sciences major at UNL. Signor is a student leader for the Kansas City trip.

As a student leader she's responsible for planning daily activities, the educational aspects of the trip and making sure everyone gets where they need to be.

This isn't the first service break Signor has participated in. Last year, she went to Mississippi to help with Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.

"It was not physically hard, more emotionally," Signor wrote in an e-mail. "To see people who were still working on getting their lives back years after the storm was disheartening but motivating at the same time."

She thinks this year's trip to Kansas City will be successful.

"Kansas City has a huge underage homeless population, so any effort there will make a difference," she said.

However, the trips will only be successful if the vans actually leave the parking lot.

"They can't go unless the vans are full," Maynard said. "We are in need of two faculty leaders, because we just had two cancel on us. Everything kind of has to fall into place.
"We're hopeful that we can get someone last minute."

While there's still time for faculty to get involved, it's too late for students to sign up for the spring trips.

However, Maynard encourages students to check Student Involvement's Web site and plan for an upcoming alternative break.

Students get more out of the trips than they expect, Maynard said.

"A lot of times they stay at churches in sleeping bags," she said. "It's nothing glamorous, but the students are there because they want to make a difference, help out."

Signor agrees.

"It would be really convenient to detach myself from the problems that our communities face," she said. "I am not the one who sleeps in a car at night or goes hungry daily. Those are the people that deserve a break, not me."

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