Molly Garvey participates in Catalina Island trip

Alternative Spring Break Trips Offer Rich Experience

By Christine E. Shade, USC Publications

A number of students left North America to take part in alternative Spring Break activities last year. Twenty students traveled to Uruguay in March 2002 to spend 10 days in El Cerro, a small community just outside the capital of Montevideo. Other USC groups worked in the desert, in homeless shelters, at the Navajo Nation and on Catalina Island. In all, there were five volunteer trips with distinct agendas. A majority of the participants were students from the USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences.

Eleven USC College students participated in the Uruguay trip: Benjamin Alayev, Jessica Baxter, Jesus Camarena, Erica Graham, Tiffany Holm, Haviva Kohl, Sylvia Lambrechts, Jeffrey Lasker, Michael Lloyd, Akta Patel and Tammy Tran. An adviser, USC Hillel’s Rabbi Jonathan Klein, and a Hillel staff member accompanied the group.

Klein says the idea for an international destination came to him at a Hillel conference in the Poconos, where he met Jewish students from Montevideo’s Hillel. “I was blown away by their incredible perspective.”

The program was a partnership between Hillel and USC’s Volunteer Center, with an emphasis on the Jewish notion of tzedakah, Klein says. “Tzedakah means charity, but more than that, translates as righteousness.” Each day while in Uruguay, Klein’s group studied Jewish texts, learning about giving honor and dignity to the poor.

The students helped to build a medical distribution site and an afterschool children’s center, and they renovated a clothing distribution center. Materials were donated by Uruguayans.

Senior Jennifer Medina, who speaks Spanish, was affected by the despair she saw in many of the villagers. Yet, she says, women who had not been able to continue their education because of lack of funds for books or clothing were hoping for a better life for their children. What the students saw and learned in Uruguay ignited discussions on poverty, freedom, opportunities and hope for the future, says Medina.

Students stayed with families in the Montevideo Jewish community. Most of the student volunteers were Jewish, but the team included a Hindu and a Buddhist as well, Klein says, and they celebrated the Sabbath with a side trip to Argentina after finishing their work.

USC College students who studied environmentalism in the living lab of Catalina Island were Melanie Cheng, Molly Garvey, Jesyka Harris, Linda Ho, Rivka Katz, Jack Lam, Chia-Hsien Lin, Kristen Moore (student coordinator), Blushel Ocbina, Kamila Sikora and Rona Smith. They stayed at the Emerald Bay Boy Scout Camp and worked nearby removing non-native fennel and castor bean plants. They also replanted blue oaks, which are native to Emerald Bay.

“The trip was challenging to plan, especially because it was a new program,” says Moore, a psychology major. “It was a pretty big undertaking, but at the end of the week we could see the results.”

The trip had a strong emphasis on discussion and reflection, she says. “Some of the discussions were on what to do about the L.A. River, how we as USC students can educate others on the problems surrounding it, and how politics and the environment are interrelated,” she adds.

Moore’s goal as coordinator was to inspire participants to become more involved in environmental work. Apparently she succeeded. Since returning home, Moore says, “The group e-mails each other about each and every environment-related service event that they are involved in, and they’re getting involved with causes here in Los Angeles.”

USC volunteers have gone to Death Valley since 1992. Last year, 14 USC College students participated: Jeanne Chuman, Mat Domaradzki, Patrick Fisher, Pushkar Joshi (student coordinator), Edmund Lee Pak Kuen, Kristen Lerch, Alexis Prindle, Nitin Sharma, Julie Sieker, Kara Strubel, Esther Teo, Nilay Vora, Wong Chong Wei and Carl Yu.

The students took part in the six-day environmental service-learning experience, camping five nights at Break-fast Canyon. It was student coordinator Pushkar Joshi’s third trip; he also went in his freshman and junior years.

The group helped National Park rangers move cattails and bulrushes from an existing wetland and planted them at the Texas Springs campground, which had suffered from water runoff and erosion. They removed invasive weeds—London rocket and salt cedar—from the campground.

The students also restored terrain made into an illegal road in the ecologically unstable region next to the Stovepipe Wells sand dunes. “Illegal roads destroy the slowly regenerating outer crust of the desert soil,” says Joshi. Using shovels and hacksaws, they removed exotic plants, such as water-depleting non-native palm trees.

“We got to see a lot more of Death Valley than we normally do, since we were always on time and finished projects ahead of schedule,” says Joshi. “It was an educational exercise for me, and a life-changing experience for most of the participants.”

The effects of homelessness and spiritualism were the subject of the Salinas and Los Angeles excursion, which included USC College students Nazia Baig, Deepika Bains, Elizabeth Carley, Jeffrey Hill, Judith Hong, Rahul Kasukurthi, Monie Okhade, Leah Ramiro (student coordinator), Joanna Schochet and Sydney Wilbur.

Two-dozen students in all spent their first day at the Sunshine Mission near USC and the downtown Midnight Mission. They then traveled to Dorothy’s Place, a shelter in Salinas, accompanied by Michelle Blanchette, director of the Volunteer Center, and Rabbi Susan Laemmle, dean of religious life.

USC College students Maria Caudillo, Charisse Chin, Angelica Eun-Yul, Graciela Felix, April Fernandes (student coordinator), Maricela Garcia, Isabel Hong, Ana Morales, Donald Nadalin, Sara Nakasone, Rana Ram, Linda Serret, Suzanne Taylor, Sasha Villacis and Neil Vora were among the 26 students who traveled to Navajo Nation in Bluff, Utah. Along with four advisers, they painted homes and made repairs as in past years. Their evenings were spent learning about Native American culture.

Students pay a fee to take part in all the programs. Although some trips are more expensive than others, a portion of the cost is covered by a campus philanthropic fund and private donations. Still, most of the students return to campus each spring feeling that they have received much more than they gave, Blanchette says—and they’re eager to go back again.