URI students learn about community revitalization, urban poverty, and immigration injustices during a week in Dallas, Texas, through URI’s Service Corps alternative spring break program.
Since 2009, URI Service Corps, a student-run, student-financed organization, has planned Alternative Spring Break volunteer service trips that focus on communities in need while also providing students with leadership training and service learning opportunities.
The Corps’ first trip, to Washington, D.C., had 13 participants. Last year, there were 250 applicants for 116 volunteer positions, says Amy Albert, community engagement coordinator with the URI Center for Career & Experiential Education, who assists URI Service Corps in its planning and execution of Alternative Spring Break.
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Trips are themed in the sense that they are chosen to address issues of particular importance to students. In 2019, the themes of immigration injustice and refugee services, community revitalization, and urban poverty were addressed through the trips planned. Once in a community, student volunteers may work in soup kitchens, food pantries, childcare facilities, homeless shelters, and community centers—or somewhere else entirely. Students on the Dallas, Texas, trip volunteered at a food bank, a refugee services organization, an arts program at a community center, and a farm where plots were given to refugee women to grow and sell produce.
URI Service Corps has planned six Alternative Spring Break trips for 2020: one international, three out of state, one Habitat for Humanity and, for the first time, a trip for first-year students only. The latter will entail working with the local branch of Habitat for Humanity. “It’s a service immersion program in their backyard, and it addresses the Rhode Island housing crisis,” Albert said. “We wanted to create a space for first-year students to share, learn, and be servant leaders.”
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