UMD Spring Breakers Step into the Community Classroom

Chloe Isaac

A group of University of Maryland students traded in tropical beaches, parties, and relaxation for education, community service and volunteerism during spring break this year.

Alternative Break (AB) trip-goers travel locally, nationally, and internationally, to learn about social issues that are affecting those communities while volunteering to address those issues.
One team of students, lead by Chloe Isaac and Ann Marie Huisentruit, went to Baltimore to focus on poverty, affordable housing and homelessness.

Isaac said that they taught the other participants about the wage gap and the disproportionate spread of wealth before departing on their trip. The group also went through sensitivity training about how to be inclusive, including using “people first” language. “I think our education really helped shape our interactions with our community partners,” Huisentruit said.

To start their trip, the students bought groceries for the week as if they were receiving Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program benefits, or food stamps. They spent four hours planning what to buy.
“A lot of people don’t have that time, and that’s a huge factor,” Huisentruit said.
Isaac and Huisentruit said the challenge did not go as planned because they brought so much food and snacks along that they were never hungry.

The group slept on the floor the entire trip, but recognized that in order to effectively learn about their social issue, “they had to lean into the discomfort,” according to Huisentruit.
Courtney Holder is the Alternative Breaks coordinator at the University of Maryland and oversees the experiences. She believes that the relationships built between participants and community partners often have the greatest impact. “It’s an opportunity for community members to give voice to their own lived experiences” Holder said. “In turn the community members are taking away new perspectives and friendships.” Bea Gaddy’s Family Center was one of the sites where the group volunteered. Bea Gaddy’s provides necessary items like food, diapers and clothes for people of all ages. Volunteers at Bea Gaddy’s can do a variety of tasks, but the UMD group helped sort food and served it to clients.

“Eventually, these students will go on to be our next doctors and dentists; they will be helping the people they were providing food to,” said Cynthia Brooks, a staff member at Bea Gaddy’s Family Center. “It gives them a better idea of the population they will be serving in the future.”
It is a very different experience working up close and personal with people experiencing poverty — different than what you might see on television, according to Brooks. “When you come here and actually prepare a bag of food for someone you understand that you will be helping someone eat a meal tonight,” Brooks said. UMD has been working with Bea Gaddy’s for a number of years, something Brooks is grateful for. This year’s student leaders valued the opportunity to see below the surface of hunger, why a person may be receiving federal assistance.

“Alternative breaks and any kind of short term service learning experience are often heavily criticized because they are just that, short term,” Holder said. “We partner long term with our community partners.”
The Baltimore AB students also visited a few organizations within Catholic Charities, including My Sister’s Place Lodge and Weinburg Resource Center. “If we did not have volunteers, we might as well close our doors,” said Valerie Tarantino, director of My Sister’s Place Lodge.

While AB students often already know the issues, she notices how much their perspectives and ideas change when they actually interact with clients. Through hearing peoples’ stories and understanding the complexity of homelessness, according to Tarantino.

The student group also helped prepare meals for Catholic Charities. The organization has about 2,000 employees and relies on the volunteer help of over 20,000 volunteers, according to Assistant Director of Social Ministry Allison Stone. “Catholic Charities loves when college students come because they bring a fresh energy,” Stone said. “They lift the spirits of our staff and volunteers.”

The group also learned about affordable housing and poverty from seminars with a small church, the Citizen’s Planning and Housing Association, and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Isaac and Huisentruit said that the group learned a lot about themselves too. Some of the participants disclosed that their lives and ideas had drastically changed as a result of the trip. One woman had thought there was only one ‘kind’ of homeless person, but her perceptions changed greatly.

“You are not aware of something until it’s hitting you in the face.,” Isaac said. “You are not aware unless you are dealing with it or unless you are in a program like Alternative Breaks” Isaac and Huisentruit recalled asking a man experiencing homelessness what they could do to make a difference. He said acknowledging someone as human was one of the best things that he could think of.

If it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind, according to AB coordinator Courtney Holder. Many people also become immune or overwhelmed by the complex issue of homelessness
“Experiences like this are the ‘real world’ classroom,” Holder said.


Issues |Education|Shelters


Region |Washington DC

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