Alternative Service Break Experiences

Alaska 2016 VIDEO

Alaska 2019 VIDEO

This is an educational-focused trip. We’ll be assisting in the Hoonah public schools, the Head Start Program, after school club, and the Senior Center. There may also be an opportunity for community involvement projects. The trip highlights the Native Alaskan culture, as well as the importance of the environment and natural resources. This experience is a great cultural exchange learning about the traditions and history of the Tglinit people.

• Break dates: March 7-17, 2024
• Cost: $1600-$1900

In partnership with Multicultural Student Affairs, this ASB will allow participants to travel to multiple states across the southeast to visit museums, churches, and historic sites related to the Civil Rights Movement. Participants will engage in educational sessions, direct volunteer activities and reflection, as well as experience the food, arts, and culture of multiple southeast cities.

• Break dates: March 9-17, 2024
• Cost: $600-$700

Volunteers will work with People First Tourism and GlobeAware. This trip focuses on disrupting an industry that often takes advantage of the people and places that make it profitable in the first place.

Participants will engage in experiences centered on environmental ecotourism, stay in community centers, and partner with the community to complete projects meant to enhance local resources. Participants will embark on an excursion to Earth University which has an innovative educational approach to prepare young people from Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and other regions to contribute to the sustainable development of their home communities while constructing a prosperous and just global society.

• Break dates: March 9-17, 2024
• Cost: $1900-$2400

Servicio Para la Paz (SPP) facilitates community driven development in marginalized communities in the Republica Dominicana through shared experiences with Dominican and USA university student volunteers. Established in the Dominican Republic in 2005, Servicio Para la Paz has worked towards promoting the development of more than 14 communities with infrastructure projects and community empowerment through community councils. These internal projects have included the construction of a classroom, river flood protection wall, and a water tank for clean water access. Servicio Para la Paz also collaborates with institutions that support the same programmatic areas we work with.

• Break dates: March 9-17, 2024
• Cost: $1600-$2000

Every year, the Women’s Center teams up with Student Leadership and Engagement to host an Alternative Service Break trip to Guatemala focusing on gender issues.

Participants on this trip explore:

• traditional understandings of masculinity, femininity, and non-binary gendered identities,
• historical and contemporary manifestations of gender-based violence in Guatemala, and
• how gender influences the daily lives of Guatemalans, often evidenced most clearly through structured systems which perpetuate situations of poverty and restrictive definitions of how people experience life.

• Break dates: March 9-17, 2024
• Cost: $1900-2400

Visit Site

Volunteers are the heart and soul of the Village. Our passionate volunteers contribute their time and talent helping to create priceless memories for critically ill children and their families during magical weeklong wish vacations in our whimsical, storybook Village.

Serving in a variety of unique and diverse roles, volunteers enjoy a truly rewarding experience helping to deliver happiness and inspire hope for our precious families. From serving “Ice Cream For Breakfast” in Henri’s Starlite Scoops and operating our accessible rides, to assisting with wish family check-in, every task undertaken by our wonderful volunteers is impactful and meaningful – bringing us one step closer to transforming lives.

• Break dates: March 9-17, 2024
• Cost: $750-$900

The Fuller Center for Housing is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that seeks to eradicate poverty housing by promoting partnerships with individuals and community groups to build and rehabilitate homes for people in need.

Ancient Peru was the seat of several prominent Andean civilizations, most notably that of the Incas. Currently, Peru is a country where 44 percent of its people live below the poverty line and over 70 percent of the rural population live in homes with dirt floors. The Fuller Center Peru is at work in the small migrant community of La Florida, roughly 3 hours south of Lima. It falls within one of the most arid regions on earth, receiving little or no rainfall. Agriculture is maintained through a system of irrigation canals that bring water from the higher elevations of the Andes or from artesian wells sunk below the desert.

Fuller Center homes are typically 650 square feet and built on families’ own land. For many of these families, their Fuller Center home is the first permanent dwelling they have ever lived in and owned. Families perform sweat equity and sign an affordable, no-profit, no-interest mortgage agreement. In 2019 we completed our 100th home, and counting.

• Break dates: March 9-17, 2024
• Cost: $1800-$2200

SBP is a national disaster resilience and recovery organization whose mission is to shrink the time between disaster and recovery, providing support to communities before and after a natural disaster. SBP arrived in Puerto Rico shortly after Hurricane Maria damaged more than 1 million homes and disrupted the lives of more than 3 million families. We understand the importance of providing these homeowners with a predictable path forward to ensure they don’t reach their breaking point waiting for recovery.

SBP Puerto Rico has brought over 110 families back home since we started our long-term recovery operations in Puerto Rico back in 2018. Our headquarters are 1502

Calle San Rafael San Juan PR 00909 and we have begun rebuilding in 11 municipalities throughout the island, including the town of Yabucoa where the hurricane made landfall.

• Break dates: March 9-17, 2024
• Cost: $1300-$1600

The Rwanda spring break experience is a transformative opportunity which focuses above all else on cultural exchange and STEM focused education in community schools. Students will have the opportunity to visit the University of Rwanda, the Women’s Center, and the Genocide Memorial. Participants stay at the real “Hotel Rwanda” and also go on a safari and dive into the history and culture of this amazing country.

• Break dates: March 9-17, 2024
• Cost: $1000
• This experience is for COE enhancement fee paying students only

Our team will travel to the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina to work with the Rutherford Housing Partnership, a 25-year-old 501(c)3 non-profit organization designed to address urgent home repairs affecting health and safety in Rutherford County communities. While being immersed in the culture of rural Appalachia, you will gain a better understanding of how housing insecurity and economic disparity affects rural communities here in North Carolina, and the nature of a community-centered response.

• Break dates: March 9-17, 2024
• Cost: $350-$400