This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 7, 2009 - Just weeks into her freshman year at Webster University, Sara Gunn took her first trip away from campus. It wasn't your typical college excursion. She and three other students joined thousands of volunteers in New Orleans helping with recovery of the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast.
Gunn returned to the region that spring and took part in a project that involved tearing down houses that had been badly damaged by Katrina.
"I remember one house you had to chip away at all the plaster with a sledgehammer," she said. "It was very tiring work."
Yet Gunn couldn't get enough. As president of Webster's Habitat for Humanity chapter, she organized another trip to Louisiana her sophomore year. Now a senior, Gunn will spend her last college spring break with 26 other students building a house for a grandmother and four grandchildren in Picayune, Miss.
Spring break service projects - a popular alternative to tropical tanning trips - are happening this year for students across the St. Louis area. Participants are traveling to spots from South Dakota to South Africa, with purposes ranging from tutoring children to learning about foreign cultures.
The Webster trip to Picayune is costing students just $25 (plus meals). A combination of student fund-raising, alumni donations and university support is helping to keep the price down. So is the decision to take a 10-hour bus ride instead of flying to Mississippi. But few service trips are that inexpensive, and in the midst of an economic recession campus officials who oversee such projects are noticing some differences this year.
Sarah Tillery, the coordinator for community service at Washington University who advises large philanthropy groups, said that "hands down fund raising is tougher with the economy." The number of people who donate to causes such as service trips is roughly the same but the amount each person gives has dropped in some cases.
St. Louis University students going on domestic trips will pay on average $400 a person this year. The campus ministry subsidizes part of the cost, said Ben Smyth, the ministry's faith and justice coordinator who helps coordinate the trips.
Still, many international trips are well over $1,000 and out of the price range for a number of participants - particularly this year. Liz Johnson, a St. Louis U. student, said she was interested in a trip to Belize but couldn't afford the $1,300 price tag.
Ideally, Smyth said, there would be a surplus of students wanting to go on trips so that when one person drops out another can fill the void. But this year, there's no waiting list - which Smyth attributes to the economy.
"It's challenging," he said. "My gut feeling is it's harder to recruit this year in general."
Tony Mravle, director of campus ministry at Fontbonne University, said several students who typically go on all three service trips offered throughout the year are deciding to take just one for financial reasons. This year, some students traveled to Biloxi, Miss., in January and have an upcoming project in West Virginia. Both are housing-related trips. In June, students will go to Belize to help build a church, establish a library and tutor children.
Mravle said he hasn't noticed a drop off in overall student participation. That could change next year, he added, if outside financial support drops and the trips become more expensive.
Students who are taking service trips this spring may have already hit the road. Here's a look at where some of them are going and what they have planned.
Students Go Recruiting
Last year, during a service trip to Brownsville, Texas, a group of Washington U. students went from classroom to classroom in an effort to persuade high school seniors to consider higher education. At one school, they came across a student who not only was on track to attend college but was thinking strongly about going to their college. The students spoke to the senior about life at Wash U. and a scholarship program that many Hispanic applicants have taken advantage of. The Brownsville native enrolled there last fall.
Many of the same students, including Washington U. junior Natalie Kress, are returning to the area this spring to talk up college once again. The students, who are part of the Latino Empowerment Team, focus largely on schools that don't have college counselors. Many of the students they speak with are Hispanic. Kress said one of the aims is to encourage children of undocumented immigrants to consider higher education.
Kress said the students act out skits about college, explain the process of applying for financial aid and talk about how they decided on where to enroll.
"What I find motivating is to hopefully have a profound effect on a student's life," Kress said. "We don't expect everyone to immediately go and fill out a college application, but I consider it a win if they choose to think about pursuing higher education."
The Brownsville trip is one of at least 18 Washington U. service projects taking place over spring break, according to Tillery, the campus service coordinator. In addition to several domestic trips, students are going to places such as Costa Rica, Uganda, Vietnam, Guatemala and Peru. A group of occupational therapy graduate students is staying in St. Louis to provide health services to mostly immigrant senior citizens.
Many trips are organized by campus groups such as the Campus Y, Interfaith Campus Ministries Association, and Hillel. Tillery said trips tend to be either location- or theme-specific. About six projects, for instance, are related to Habitat for Humanity, an organization that helps build homes for low-income residents. Students tend to prefer such trips, she said, because they are hands-on.
Immersion Trips Prove Popular
St. Louis U. students are heading to nine different locations this year, among them Belize, New Orleans and the Bronx, where trip participants will help with an afterschool program at a community center. Most of the trips are organized through the campus ministry.
Smyth, the faith and justice coordinator, said many of the trips have to do with an element of social justice. Senior Mike Reddy has gone of several such trips - including a project two years ago to rebuild trailers and promote literacy in Appalachia.
Also popular are trips that involve immersion into a different culture. This spring a group is going to a reservation in South Dakota to learn about Native American life, visit a juvenile detention center and teach religious education classes.
Johnson, the SLU senior, is going on that trip -- her third service project as a college student. She said she is interested in a new experience after going to New Orleans for Katrina relief help and to West Virginia to help a cattle farmer.
"It's a good opportunity to open your eyes to a part of the country and a culture you'd never see, even as a tourist," Johnson said. "I only get a few opportunities to do this. Once I've graduated I can go to the beach whenever I want."