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March 2008
Taking an Alternabreak
Students get off campus and into the community with this alternative to traditional spring break.
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By Mai Thai '10
Building community and sustainability: Those are hot topics at Pomona,
and the Hart Volunteer Center is no exception. For the second year
running, its community service-based Alternative Spring Break program,
aka “Alternabreak,” will take students to different parts of
California—this time, with more funding, more trips and more students.
Students tend to an elementary-school garden during
Alternabreak '07.
Photos: Julia Gleichman '10 |
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The program serves as an opportunity for those with limited spring break
options to get off campus and into the community. Amarillys Rodriguez
’11, who will be attending the Los Angeles trip this spring break,
didn’t want to stay on campus during break and was attracted to the
program because of its mission. “I like the idea that the community
service focuses on social justice issues,” she says.
Aside from providing an alternative spring break option, the program’s
other goal is to build sustained relationships with various
community-based organizations. “We really want to get to a point where
we identify some organizations that we can partner with and continue to
work with in successive years,” says Maria Tucker, director of the
Volunteer Center, “sort of extending the Pomona community beyond
Pomona.”
According to Tucker, Alternabreak was the brainchild of the 2006-07 ASPC
president, Sarah Kuriakose ’07. Kuriakose donated her $1,600 community
service grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation toward the start of the
program. This served as a catalyst for an even larger program this year,
now with more financial and logistical support from a host of different
sources, including the Alumni Association and various academic and
student affairs departments.
Community Through Volunteering
When spring break rolls around later this month, students will be
heading to San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco for service projects
centered on the theme of social and environmental justice. They’ll be
working with and learning from organizations like Communities for a
Better Environment in L.A., Tijuana River Estuary Research Reserve in
San Diego, and Collective Roots in the Bay Area, among many other green
and school-centered programs. However, the program also recognizes the
nature of spring break, so opportunities are available for volunteers to
explore local cultural landmarks as well.
Another volunteer opportunity finds the
Alternabreakers clearing a field |
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All of the trips, funding and transportation are organized by student
coordinators at the Volunteer Center. When the coordinators got together
to discuss the goals of the trips this year, they looked for
organizations that they could work with on a consistent basis. They
recognized the politics of doing community work and how it could be a
burden for organizations to have volunteer support for only a short
term.
“We [thought a lot] about what we wanted to get out of doing work with a
community program and how we’ll foster a type of continual
relationship,” says Charisse Wu ’08, one of the Alternabreak
coordinators. “If it wasn’t going to be a continual relationship, we
thought about how we can communicate honestly [with organizations] so
that they know we’re here and what we can do.”
Community Through Alumni
In addition to the worthwhile experiences of doing community work,
students also benefit from some serious networking as they stay with
alumni while away. On one of last year’s trips, Janet Dafoe ’71 invited
classmates who lived close by for a potluck with the students who were
staying in her Palo Alto, Calif., home. Her husband, Ron Davis, the
director of the Stanford Genome Technology Center, also took the
students on a tour of the DNA lab. According to Holly Duncan, associate
director of alumni relations, he was thoroughly impressed by the
students, and this led to talks about working with Pomona professors, as
well as bringing some Pomona students to the lab to do research in the
future.
There is time to visit the local sites and have a
little fun. |
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Other alumni also did service with the students. While helping out at a
food pantry last year, Julia Gleichman ’10 recalled how she got to know
some alumni when they came to assist in scooping pounds of frozen
vegetables. “Just by talking to alumni and getting their perspectives,
we got an idea of what it might be like in the future one day,” she
says.
Sustaining Community
Whether it’s the connections built with organizations or those built
with alumni, it seems that everyone is working towards the idea of
sustainable relations. “This is in line with the College’s strategic
plan in moving forward and developing additional substantive
relationships with…our community, whether they are local or even
distant,” Tucker says. Alternabreak serves as a way to help students
bridge the gap between school and the outside world.
“It was good to know the school supported what we were doing,” Gleichman
says of last year’s experience. “It was a really positive spring break—I
think that was the goal, and it was met.”
As for this year, the students are all ready—waiting lists for the trips
filled to capacity within the first hour of sign-ups.
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