This year, Bowdoin students participated in Alternative Spring Break (ASB) trips to Guatemala, Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Louisiana and Maine. Bowdoin offerred six trips this year, down from the last spring’s eight.
The McKeen Center for the Common Good began running ASB trips in 2003. Andrew Lardie, associate director for service and leadership at the McKeen Center, emphasized the importance of their role in these service experiences.
“What makes our program somewhat distinctive is the degree to which students lead them,” Lardie said. “Many other institutions can’t or don’t trust their students as much.”
In addition to the actual service students do, Lardie went on to the note that the trips provide an important chance for leaders and participants to grow.
“My favorite part is how much those trips leaders learn and step up to the plate,” Lardie said.
Each trip had two leaders who were required to provide the McKeen Center with plans and an explanation of why the destination—particularly if it was far from Brunswick—is important to the trip’s success. From tracking expenses to maintaining group camaraderie, the trips are largely in their hands.
According to Lardie, the trips cost between $425 and $1,250, excluding the free ASB in Maine. Students who attend can apply for need-based grants, covering up to 80 percent of the cost. Each ASB has space for 12 students, which is more than Alternative Winter Break (AWB) can support.
Georgia Whitaker ’14 and Tracie Goldsmith ’14 led a trip with Safe Passage, a non-profit in the Guatemala City area, to work with low-income children and families.
The trip is one that Bowdoin has participated in for the past several years.
“One of the reasons the Guatemala trip keeps happening is that people go on it and then want to lead it,” Lardie explained.
Whitaker, a Latin American Studies major explained that Guatemala also appealed to her in particular because it aligns with her academic interests.
“I decided to lead this trip primarily based on my interest in bilingual education and recent Guatemalan history,” she wrote in an email to the Orient. “Slightly under two decades ago, Guatemala ended its 36-year civil war (1960-96) and I was interested to see how the legacies of this conflict—in particular, the displacement and forced relocation—continue to impact the urban education system today.”
Though trips to faraway places under the auspices of relief are sometimes criticized as “voluntourism”—tourism justified by service—the ASB trip to Guatemala gave students access to an experience not available in Maine.
“My favorite part of the trip was talking with the mothers and grandmothers of [the] children,” Whitaker wrote. “Safe Passage has recently founded an adult literacy and social entrepreneurship program to help parents, many of whom grew up speaking a Mayan dialect, learn to read and write in Spanish.”
For Whitaker, who has previously volunteered in other Latin American countries, this experience was a highlight.
“It was pretty inspiring to see how motivated these adults were to begin their classroom education again, often at a first or second grade level,” she added.
The classes also encourage social entrepreneurship, which Goldsmith explained this included “making jewelry out of a paper. It’s a steady job for them, and they’re able to do it from home.”
Safe Passage does work near the Guatemala City’s city dump, where some Guatemalans go to look for refuse that can be deposited for recycling.
Goldsmith commented that one of the most memorable experiences of the trip was visiting a cemetery that overlooked the dump. She realized many mourners had to walk more than a mile in the hot weather just to get to its gates.
The trip also mixes Bowdoin students together who might not otherwise have common ground.
“The students came from a mix of social groups—all kinds of people,” Goldsmith said.
Applications to lead an AWB or ASB trip for the 2014-2015 academic year are now available from the McKeen Center.