Each year the Tucker Foundation provides the opportunity for students to spend their Spring Break as part of a service-learning trip, known as Alternative Spring Break trips. Trips are student organized and run, and participants contribute to the funding for each trip through campus-wide fundraising efforts that occur during the winter term.
For more information, please contact Zeva Levine, Tucker Foundation's AmeriCorps VISTA member.
Phone: (603) 646-9761
e-mail: Zeva.Levine@dartmouth.edu
Trip Leader: Jiles Pourier, Cinnamon Spear
This trip will bring a group of Dartmouth students to a reservation on the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe in Eagle Butte, South Dakota. Students will have a wide range of opportunities to engage and learn from the community about the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. Participants will give back to this community by working with the Cheyenne River Youth Project, a community-based organization which provides afterschool activities for area youth and teens. In addition, students will plan and execute a college awareness night for high school students. Reflections and educational sessions for this trip will explore topics such as community stories and traditions, history of the Lakota People and the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, Native American sovereign nation status and cross cultural education.
Trip Leaders: Christopher Han, Grace Taveras, Ediz Tiyansan
This trip will bring Dartmouth students to a Haitian migrant community in the Dominican Republic; students will work in Barrio Saman with roughly 100 families near the north-coast town of Monte Llano. The trip aims to develop a cross-cultural relationship through service projects in this community. In 2008, ASB students built a park and community center, in addition to conducting a health survey and teaching HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention classes to community youth. This year's service projects will continue the health and educational outreach efforts begun last year. Students will learn about how Dominicans and Haitians--two very distinct cultures--came to share the island of Hispaniola, and will engage in discussions about poverty, marginalization, immigration, spirituality/religion, international health and development.
Trip leaders: Ana Jackson, Linda Li
90% of all the tomatoes consumed in the United States come from Immokalee, Florida, where workers pick at least 5,000 lbs of tomatoes a day while earning minimum wage. While working with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and a local shelter, students will have the opportunity to interact with migrant workers from Mexico, Guatemala, Haiti and West Africa. In helping to run the shelter, students will meet migrant workers from a variety of backgrounds and learn about the social and economic issues they face. Among other tasks, service work will include helping in the shelter kitchen and thrift store, tutoring children, interacting with shelter guests, assisting with documentation of new cases.
Trip leaders: Rashmi Agarwal, Elliot Mattingly
This trip will travel to Leslie County in Eastern Kentucky, spending two weeks in rural Appalachia doing a variety of projects with a focus on healthcare. We are looking to assemble a diverse group of undergrads with a variety of interests (non-pre-medical students are encouraged to apply). Participants will learn about healthcare and economic challenges in one of America's most marginalized and underserved regions. The first week will consist of home repair and construction work to help low income families in the region, while the second week will be spent working with Kentucky's Frontier Nursing Service. Dartmouth Medical School teams have visited the area in the past, but this will be the first undergraduate-led experience.
Trip Leader: Ki Suh Jung
The 2009 Faith in Action: San Francisco Alternative Spring Break trip seeks to bring together students from a diversity of religious and moral traditions to explore the issue of youth and homelessness in the Bay Area of California. Together, this group will work with a variety of community agencies serving homeless youth while learning about the complexity of this issue. By exploring service as a shared value across religious and spiritual lines, participants will have the opportunity to develop meaningful relationships and understanding within the context of religious difference and to delve deeply into personal visions of what it means to serve a community in the context of a life of faith. Students from all religious and moral traditions encouraged to apply! We will work with students to accommodate any religious dietary or lodging needs.
