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Alternative spring break offers chance to serve
By DONNA LONGENECKER
Reporter Assistant Editor
Spring break this year meant working on their souls, rather than their tans, for a group of 35 UB students who spent their mid-semester break in Washington, D.C., helping out in soup kitchens and after-school programs and working with the elderly and patients with AIDS.
This was the fourth straight year the Newman Center has organized an alternative spring break trip, providing students with the opportunity to participate in service work through the Center for Student Missions. Past trips were made to Camden, N.J., Laurens County, S.C., and Cincinnati, Ohio.
Maria Clare, campus minister for the Newman Center, said the theme of this year's trip was "If you want peace, work for justice."
"We were very conscious going down there of the possibility that war might break out—that was our fear—but for worldwide peace to happen, it's got to begin in a city like Washington, D.C.," said Clare.
Students sorted, prepared, bagged and delivered food for Food for Friends, a D.C.-area organization that provides three meals a day and groceries to people with HIV/AIDS and other debilitating diseases. "They had a production line like I've never seen before," said Clare.
Food for Friends was organized by a pastor who realized his parish was dwindling because of the AIDS epidemic, noted junior Brian Oliver. "Seeing this really made it stand out to us what one person can do with some help from his friends," said Oliver, who added that a group of students will return to Washington this summer to help out with Food for Friends' largest fundraiser, a 400-mile bike ride dubbed the "Tour de Friends."
"I have grown so much in just the time since I left the (alternative spring break) trip last year (to Cincinnati)," Oliver said.
During a prayer breakfast at a local food pantry, students spent time getting to know the people who ate at the pantry. Clare said that while students were interested in, and concerned about, those needing a hot meal, the interest and curiosity was a two-way street, with clients of the pantry also wanting to know about the students' lives—and joking about the brutal winter weather in Buffalo.
In addition to working at Food for Friends, students also spent time in day care centers and at after school programs, playing games, reading and helping children with homework.
"It is one thing to talk about what the neighborhoods and people are like, but actually going to see the area and interacting with the people there is totally different," said freshman engineering student Rachel LoSecco.
"We are very much different from the kids and the other people we helped, and live in much different environments."
Many students were struck by the contrasts that existed just a mile from the capital, in a neighborhood called Anacostia, which "exists obliviously in so much poverty," said Keino Baird, who tutored children in an area of D.C. where "the tour buses will never take you." This was Baird's third spring break trip with the Newman Center.
"What I like about this project was that it impacted so many people—the parishioners, the students and all the people we eventually worked with in D.C.," said Baird, a political science and history major.
Students "camped" for the week at the First Star of Bethlehem Church run by the Center for Student Missions. They had raised almost $10,000 for the trip by "renting" themselves out to local residents to do yardwork, painting, cleaning, tutoring or performing other household chores at the rate of $10 an hour.
The trip did have an impact on students in that some stereotypes about poverty were dismantled," Clare explained. "You can begin to see that it's not a black-and-white issue; it's not as simple as saying, 'get a job.' Students can make comparisons between the rich and the poor, and see firsthand how poverty affects people," she said.
Students came back to UB, with a real desire to make a difference in Buffalo, she said. Several already have participated in two service projects in the area, one with Habitat for Humanity and the other at a soup kitchen.
The highlight of the trip for Clare was seeing the students bond as a team and watching a young woman who has participated in the alternative spring break program for the past four years "undergo a transformation." "I've been able to walk and share in her journey," she noted.
Anne Saleh, a studio art major who raised $170 for the rent-a-student program, said it was inspiring to be around people her own age who were willing to help others and who shared many of her own views about faith. She said that one of the highlights of the trip for her was running an arts-and-crafts project for an after-school program.
Moreover, working with the other students who traveled to D.C. was just as much fun as anything they did during their free time there, she said.
Spirituality, prayer, service and community are integral to the motivation behind volunteer service, although students needn't be Catholic to participate in the alternative spring break, said Clare, adding that she told students who were interested in making the trip, but torn between wanting to vacation with family or friends to "take a chance, try something out of the ordinary—you have nothing to lose." She called the alternative spring break trip "a once-in-a-lifetime experience—it's life-changing, heart-changing."
Matthew Regan, a sophomore computer art major, called the trip the best way he could have spent his spring break.
"It felt great helping people out and getting to see so much of the city. Something I learned from this trip was that there are very few people who know the way the world should be and even fewer who try to make it that way," Regan said. "Instead of just acknowledging the problem of poverty, we took action and made a difference in a lot of people's lives.
"This trip really opened up my eyes and made me realize there is so much more people can do to help people living in poverty," he said.