Students travel to other states, overseas to work for various service organizations
Instead of vacationing or partying over spring break, some students opted to focus their free time on service.
Some students ventured to Louisiana to work with Phoenix of New Orleans, a nonprofit organization focused on repairing the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina.
Payal Patel, a fourth-year public health student and Community Service Intern, helped restore homes in New Orleans. Her group worked on the interiors of three homes, installing baseboards and painting.
Even six years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the area, Patel said New Orleans still needs a lot of help.
“It’s crazy how much work needs to be done and how many people are still affected by Katrina,” Patel said.
Another Community Service Intern, Angela Miller, went to Palm Beach County, Florida with nine other USC volunteers.
Miller said the volunteers worked with Christians Reaching Out to Society, or C.R.O.S. Ministries, on a gleaning initiative benefiting an emergency food pantry and a local caring kitchen.
She defined gleaning as “a biblical initiative which involves the act of collecting leftover crops from farmers’ fields after they have been commercially harvested or on fields where it is not economically profitable.”
“I truly enjoyed reaching out to another community and making a positive impact,” Miller said in an email. “I would not trade the way that I spent my spring break, and I am glad I took the opportunity to fully submerge myself into creating this alternative spring break trip for the university.”
Kory Pippin, a fourth-year international business student, traveled with a group of around 20 to Nashville, Tennessee.
During the morning, the group worked on various projects, including building raised-bed gardens for low-income neighborhoods. They also sorted through clothing for a store called Thriftsmart, which works for nonprofit organizations in the United States, Mexico and Africa. Pippin said Thriftsmart recycles clothes by balling them up like hay and sending them to poor countries without a lot of textile plants to recycle.
For Pippin, the most rewarding part of the trip was working with young children at an after-school program. He said he could see that the kids really wanted the volunteers to be there.
The Methodist Student Network traveled out of the country to Ecuador in order to serve others.
The group cleaned, retiled and set up a medical clinic at an evangelical Methodist church that was also a school. Each day the group hosted vacation Bible school for the children.
Bekah Briggs, a second-year criminal justice student, said it broke her heart to see how the children loved the volunteers and didn’t want them to leave.
She also said the trip opened her eyes to see how fortunate Americans are to have everything they do.
“A lot of other countries are in need, so I would rather spend my time helping countries in need than paying $600 to go party,” Briggs said.