March 28, 2007

Students Spend Spring Break Serving Others

While some of the Ohio Wesleyan community used spring break to bask in Cancun’s sunlight or even get some much-needed rest at home, the University’s eight Spring Break Mission Teams were all over the country – and even abroad – serving and experiencing other cultures.

The teams will showcase their experiences at the Spring Break Mission Trip Celebration at 7 p.m. on Friday in the Benes Rooms in Hamilton-Williams Campus Center. The event also will be streamed at stream.owu.edu.

This year, the Spring Break Mission Teams were:

• Hurricane Katrina Recovery (New Orleans, Louisiana)
• Women in Community: The Benedictine Experience (Erie, Pennsylvania)
• Border Team (Mexico-United States border)
• Collegiate Challenge: Habitat for Humanity (West Virginia)
• Building and Rebuilding: Lakota Nation (South Dakota)
• Love and Hope Ministries, El Salvador (Central America)
• Two Communities of Faith: The Missionaries of Charity and Newman (Rome, Italy)
• Appalachia Service Project (Chavies, Kentucky)

Since the program’s start at Ohio Wesleyan in the 1980s, students and faculty have been volunteering over their spring or summer breaks to do everything from building houses to working in food and clothing banks. Locations vary by year depending upon student proposals submitted each spring. Proposals for next year are due by June 1.

The proposals must include more than just an idea for a spring break getaway. Students are asked to estimate a budget, including costs for airfare, passports, and even insurance; create a fund-raising plan to justify how funds will be earned; and express how the trip will translate to a service learning opportunity for participants.

Proposals are evaluated by a number of criteria, including risk-management assessment, confirmed on-site sponsoring agency or organization, and clarity of special needs. Applicants also must agree to devote at least one hour per week to planning meetings and fund-raising activities, discouraging those not fully committed to the task.

“My hope is that by working closely with students and spending the better part of the academic year preparing for the experience, they are able to more fully embrace the experience and capitalize on the many learning opportunities that are inherent to an experience such as this,” says Kelly Adamson ’00, associate chaplain for mission and vocation.

In this, her third year overseeing the program, Adamson traveled with students to the Benedictine Monastery in Erie, Pennsylvania. The experience contradicted what most would expect from a monastery.

“While most people have visions of quiet women walking around in long flowing black habits engaged only with the small part of the world found within the monastery walls, this community is prayerful and playful, engaged in praying for justice and praying while engaged in acts of justice beyond the monastery walls, in Erie and the entire world,” says Adamson.

Katie Donnan ’08, who led the Love and Hope Ministries team traveling to El Salvador, also was surprised at what she saw during her first Spring Break Mission Trip.

“Everyone says that when they get back from mission they appreciate how privileged we are to be born in America, which is definitely true, but I think that the people of El Salvador really have a wonderful sense of community compared to America,” says Donnan, an education major who decided to get involved with the team because of her love of children.

Donnan encourages all students to get involved in a service-oriented trip, as it gives a real-world perspective that is hard to come by.

“Just do it, even if you’re scared or unsure of experiencing something different,” says Donnan. “I think that everyone should at some time in their life take some type of service trip in order to get an accurate picture of the world.”

— Ann Bailey