USD’s Alternative Week of Off-Campus Learning program will take between 10 and 20 students to Belize over winter break this year for a service-learning trip.
More than 20 students applied and AWOL will be interviewing applicants all week. This will be the second year the AWOL program has offered international trips.
In the 2009-2010 school year, AWOL, run out of the office of the Center for Academic Engagement and in partnership with Americorps Vista, will sponsor up to five domestic service-learning trips for 15-20 students each, in addition to the trip to Belize.
Junior Shane Bryan, president of the board for AWOL, said the program is still accepting applications for the domestic winter break trip to Chicago as well as all four of the domestic spring break trips.
Jacquie Lonning, coordinator of the USD Center for Academic Engagement, founded the AWOL program in 2004, then called “Alternative Spring Break,” and serves as AWOL’s faculty advisor. She said that she started the program to give students a secular alternative to religion-based mission trips.
Bryan said the program needed time to mature before taking on international projects.
“We went to Mexico last year and it was a huge success,” Bryan said. “We’re confident that this trip (to Belize) will go just as well.”
More than 200 students have expressed interest in the program so far this year, Bryan said.
Program costs fluctuate by project and depend largely on whether the trip is international or domestic. Domestic trips can cost as little as $300, but international trips can run up to $2,000. AWOL Fundraising Director senior Nyah Vanterpool said there are some scholarships available on a need-basis and every student is encouraged to take part in fundraising efforts to help drive down the cost of the trips.
Students’ work in Belize will focus on one or more of many social issues like poverty, human rights, women’s empowerment and others, depending on the interests of students going on the trip, Bryan said.
Bryan also said another group will travel to Chicago to help youths affected by gang violence and fight hunger and poverty by serving meals and helping the community find sources of economic growth.
Bryan and junior Kevin Cwach went on AWOL’s first international trip last winter to Agua Prieta, Mexico. There they worked with organization called Rancho Felíz. They helped build a home for a displaced family, visited an orphanage, painted an elementary school, visited a rehabilitation facility for drug abusers and played soccer with students from a school for handicapped children.
“When you think about going to Mexico, you think of resorts and white sand beaches,” Cwach said. “On our trip, right when we crossed the border we could see how poverty-stricken the area was.”
While it may not have been the vacation in Mexico many students dream about during the long winter months in Vermillion, Bryan found the trip satisfying in a different, more meaningful way.
“It’s much more rewarding to do this rather than just see the sights,” Bryan said.
Senior Allison Struck was the site leader for last year’s spring break trip to the Cheyenne River Reservation in Eagle Butte, S.D. She said when selecting a potential project site, site leaders look for social issues they are interested in and try to partner with like-minded organizations in the area with a history of hosting service groups.
She made a point of picking a project site in the state and chose Eagle Butte because of its problems with poverty and at-risk youth.
“I think it’s really important to show students you don’t have to go 2,000 miles away to experience poverty,” she said. “You don’t even have to go 300 miles away, like we did. You can find poverty right here in Vermillion, or in Yankton or Sioux Falls.”
Several trips are in the works for spring break, including projects in Portland, Ore., Detroit, Jackson, Miss. and a possibility of a fourth trip option at an as-of-yet undisclosed location, said Cwach, an AWOL veteran and site coordinator for the Portland trip.
Cwach said he plans to look at health issues and how they are connected to poverty and access to health care when designing the Portland trip.
What sets the AWOL program apart from similar campus programs is its commitment to student leadership, both on the ground at service-learning project sites at home and abroad and in its organization at USD.
“It’s another service-learning opportunity for students,” Vanterpool said. “The difference is that we’re students ourselves.”
Struck, former president of the board and this year’s student advisor for AWOL, said student leadership is a vital part of AWOL.
“It really makes a difference when students take ownership of their organization,” Struck said.
Struck said a primary goal of AWOL is to raise awareness of social problems. They want encourage students to start working to solve those problems, both while they’re here at USD and in the future.
“If we can encourage others to become agents of social change, I think we’ve been successful,” Struck said.
Reach reporter Daniel Mollet at Daniel.Mollet@usd.edu.
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