Less than a week before their trips depart, leaders and participants in Mizzou Alternative Spring Break have been preparing and looking forward to their service trips.
About 480 students are participating in ASB this year, ASB Logistic Director Michelle Fiesta said.
Team leader Kelsey Saragnese said these students will be divided into 36 trips around the country.
**Atlanta, Georgia**
One ASB team is lead by Saragnese and Carlos Martinez Villar. Their team is heading to Atlanta, Ga., to focus on women’s issues, Saragnese said. They will be working with three different organizations. One is an after-school mentoring program called Cool Girls, Inc., made up of middle school girls in at-risk neighborhoods. The second is a project called Men Stopping Violence. The third is an organization called Tapestri, which aids in refugees in resettling in the Atlanta metropolitan area.
“The reason we selected the sites and programs that we did was to get a better understanding of how to use anti-violence education and prevention tools with different populations,” Saragnese said in an email.
Saragnese is excited to be site leader because she wants to create a great experience and environment for the new, enthusiastic group of students.
“I learned so much last year from my experience and from my fellow participants, and I cannot wait to watch my participants learn and grow over spring break this year,” she said.
Saragnese also mentioned that being a site leader is a lot harder than being a participant, though every small victory they have makes everything worth it.
She also gave advice to ASB participants.
“Keep an open mind, get to know the people around you — both the people on your trip and the people at the sites you’re working with — and go with the flow,” she said. “Sometimes plans change and things aren’t how you expected them, but there’s always a way to have fun and turn it into a positive experience. Talking to the other people on your trip can help you debrief after tough or frustrating situations and build better relationships.”
**Slick Rock, Colorado**
Another ASB team is the Schurz Hall team, which will be traveling to Slick Rock, Colo. Site leaders Chalen Jackson and Tori Meador will lead it. The team will focus on environmental work alongside the San Juan Mountains Association, including trail maintenance, fence building and ecological surveys, Jackson said. They will also be visiting the Grand Canyon on a free day.
Jackson said they had their last site leader meeting to prepare for the trip on Sunday, where they talked about logistics and transportation.
“It’s been a lot of fun,” Jackson said. “We’ve definitely been putting in long hours of time. We’re very fortunate to have a site that is well established.”
He said being a leader means having more responsibilities, especially dealing with a large number of freshmen.
Meador added that a part of a site leader’s role is to educate the participants about their social cause and getting the participants excited for the week of service.
“We’re educating our participants on why this is a big issue,” Meador said. “One of our things on our packing list was that we can’t have any plastic water bottles, and (we) really just try to explain why some of these things are important and why it is important that we do that we care about our environment.”
Jackson said that every night after service, the team will have reflections to make sure ASB participants get the most out of their trip.
“We reflect on how that day has impacted us, or something that we learned that we hadn’t thought about before, and try to figure out ways to enrich the experience through our service, “ Jackson said. “We’re reminding ourselves continually that our service is why we’re here, and it’s through this service that we’re having all these opportunities.
Participants expressed excitement for their trips.
“We’ve been doing some team building things just to make sure we all know each other pretty well before we go out on the trip,” said Marshall Maxwell, member of the Schurz team. “I really like all the people on the trip a lot. I didn’t know most of the people on the trip before.”
Freshman Kara Tabor, another participant on the Schurz trip, said she was excited to go to Colorado for the first time.
“It’s going to be a really interesting experience doing the environmental work,” she said.
**Fundraising**
One of ASB’s fundraising projects is the Adopt-A-Breakers, which are letters sent to friends and family explaining the trip’s purpose and how the money will be used, Saragnese said. For her team’s trip to Atlanta, they were able to raise $5,000, more than three times their goal of $1,500. The rest of the money will be donated to their sites after the trip.
Mizzou’s Alternative Spring Break trips have many other means of raising funds for their trips. Although canning is one of the most popular methods, trips are allowed to do any fundraisers they can think of, provided they follow all city ordinances and rules set forth by the ASB Executive Board.
For the Schurz Team, this included requesting a donation from their Residence Hall student government, Carl’s Council, to assist them in reaching their $4,000 goal. Many of the trips have already met their funding goals for this year; the few that haven’t are likely to meet their goals within the next few days.
Mizzou ASB is currently the third largest program in the nation and an affiliate of the national Break Away program, Jackson said.