Alternative Break trips life-changing for staff advisers

For Danielle Johnson, traveling to Selma, Montgomery and Birmingham, Alabama, allowed her “to ground myself in the spaces where freedom fighters literally put their bodies on the line for what they believed in.”

Chrissy Daniel’s trip to the Dominican Republic left her “learning more than I taught — about our global community and the power one individual has to make a difference.”

Both UB staff members have traveled with students as staff advisers on Alternative Break community service trips. And both highly recommend the experience.

The first of five Alternative Break trips this academic year will take place over Thanksgiving break, and the Student Engagement office is looking for faculty and staff to serve as advisers on that trip, as well as on four other trips over the winter and spring breaks.

The main role of staff advisers is to help ensure the overall safety of trip participants, work with Student Engagement to prepare for the trip, deepen the learning experience of student volunteers, and support and challenge the student trip leaders to grow in their leadership skills, according to Rachel DiDomizio, community engagement coordinator for Student Engagement.

The criteria for the job?

“Our team is looking for interested staff who exhibit qualities such as positivity, resilience, flexibility and a passion for student development,” DiDomizio says. Staff interested in serving this year need to submit the application form by Oct. 10.

This year’s trips:

• Alternative Fall Break: Poverty Alleviation in Cleveland, Ohio, Nov 23-25. This trip offers an assortment of civic learning and engagement opportunities with a variety of community organizations in the downtown Cleveland area.
• Alternative Winter Break: Environmental Sustainability in the Louisiana Wetlands, Jan 20-26. Participants of this trip will learn about the cultural and ecological history of southern Louisiana and complete community service projects that will increase the long-term sustainability of this important region.
• Alternative Spring Break: Women's Rights History in Seneca Falls, March 16-18. Students will explore the rich history of the women’s rights movement, visiting several of the sites that are integral to this movement. They will also take part in service projects.
• Alternative Spring Break: Give Where You Live in Buffalo, N.Y., March 18-22. Students will explore a variety of social issues affecting the Buffalo area, volunteer with various community organizations and get a broader sense of the city.
• Alternative Spring Break: Educational Programs in the Dominican Republic, March 16-23. Working with Outreach360, students will help teach English to children in Santiago while learning about the history of the country, exploring the culture and examining what it really means to “make change” happen in a community.

The trips that Johnson, an academic adviser for the Daniel Ackers Scholars Program, took in 2016 and 2017 to Alabama with the Social Justice/Civil Rights Alternative Break were “life-changing and soul-transforming.”

“Because of the trips, I’ve become a different person, and I’m so grateful,” she says.

Johnson says that before those trips, she had attended meetings and training sessions in Buffalo that focused on systems of oppression and ways of understanding racism, sexism and injustice.

“However, it wasn’t until standing on the Edmund Pettus Bridge (the bridge in Selma where non-violent peaceful protestors were attacked, beaten and killed by state troopers on “Bloody Sunday,” March 7, 1965) and feeling the spirit of my ancestors that I felt compelled to finally be ready to act,” she says. “I literally felt their spirit and energy, and I knew that if my ancestors were strong and brave enough to put their bodies on the line to fight for justice, I knew that I had the power and responsibility to do the same.”

Johnson says that shortly after returning from her first trip to Selma, she became actively involved in criminal injustice organizing and activism work in Buffalo — and remains fully immersed in the work to this day.

“As a result of the trips, I am in a place where I am confident in saying that I am committed to fighting injustice for the rest of my life,” she says.

Daniel, associate director of orientation, transition and parent programs in the Division of Student Life, served as a staff adviser on the spring break trip to the Dominican Republic in 2015. She says she wanted to work with student leaders in a different capacity from what she does day to day in her position at UB.

“The trip afforded the students — and me — the opportunity to share basics of the English language with children in the community, and it provided an education for us in the history, culture and traditions of the island; specifically, the relationship between Haiti and the Dominican Republic,” Daniel says. “That led to great conversations with our students around race, privilege, and our role and potential impact.”

And living, eating and becoming a member of the community for a week was educational as well, she says. “The immersive experience led to great conversation and new perspectives as we compared our temporary reality in the Dominican Republic with American culture and our lives at home.

“It was an impactful trip with a great group of students.”

More information on the trips is available here or by contacting DiDomizio at racheld@buffalo.edu or 645-8531.