While some students followed the Cowboys to Las Vegas and Seattle and others went home for spring break, the Service, Leadership & Community Engagement (SLCE) office at UW sent a few students across the country and around the globe to perform community service.
Projects ranged from urban development in Los Angeles to animal wellness in Kanab, Utah to community development and education in Jamaica.
Ethan Atwood spent his spring break in Seattle, volunteering in homeless shelters with his group.
“The trip was mostly about urban development, hunger and homelessness,” Atwood said. “I’ve seen Seattle through the eyes of a tourist, but I wanted to see it through a different lens.”
Maddy Graham led her second alternative spring break trip this year, this time to Moab, Utah. The trip worked on environmental sustainability in the area, and she and her team pulled weeds, dug flowerbeds and planted vegetables with elementary school kids.
They also got a surprise project from the BLM when they showed up to work on a trail.
“When we went there, we thought that we were just going to be cleaning trail and if there was something that was broken, fixing it,” Graham said. “Well they took us out to this empty forested area and we completely built a new trail.”
Graham said building a trail from the ground up was good for the soul, and an opportunity for personal growth.
“I view it as I’m developing myself as I’m taking these volunteer opportunities,” Graham said. “Alternative spring breaks are where you can find yourself and where you can lend a helping hand where it’s needed.”
Atwood said he was similarly inspired in Seattle, citing how beneficial it can be to explore the world outside of Laramie.
“We wanted to really give the participants a grasp on what life in the big city was like, since we’re so removed from bigger cities here in Laramie,” he said. “We definitely didn’t want to leave and everyone had a good grasp on the differences between the life of a college student and life in the bigger city for people less fortunate than us.”
The SLCE office will be hosting a spring break recap next Tuesday at 12:15 p.m. in the Wyoming Union Senate Chambers to present the experiences students had performing community service.
Alternative Spring Break Leader and UW student, Billy Sanford, helps prepare food. Last week, several groups of UW students set out to varying destinations both domestic and international, to participate in a variety of service project based trips; Sanford’s group worked on social development in Seattle.
