It is not easy for college students to give up their spring break. The week given to undergraduates in March represents a temporary freedom from schoolwork, extracurricular activity, and any existing pressure before the semester winds to a close.
Because of the existing norm to party in Mexico, visit friends studying abroad in Europe, or go home and rest, it is exceptional when students decide to take this coveted break and spend their energy on a service project.
On March 16, eight students from the Hillel Foundation University of Wisconsin-Madison traveled to Nicaragua on an American Jewish World Service project.
AJWS is a non-profit that works with non-governmental organizations to help stop injustice in impoverished nations around the world. They offer week-long service projects to high school and college students during spring break, as well as longer projects during the summer.
The goal of these trips is to combine educational programming with volunteer work to help frame the experience and prepare students for re-entry in the privileged world in which we live.
While each of the eight students had their own goals for participating in a service project in Central America, each group member’s interest came from a common motivation.
“As Jewish people, it is our duty to learn about unfairness and do our part to fix it,” said sophomore Micah Cohen, a native of New Jersey. “I know that coming here for a week isn’t going to solve world hunger or anything like that, but if I use what little time I have to at least try to understand what is going on, it’s a step in the right direction.”
The UW-Hillel group worked specifically with FDEG, a Nicaraguan foundation committed to improving the living and working conditions of the most vulnerable sectors of Nicaraguan society, focusing on the reduction of poverty, hunger and unemployment rates.
Working closely in the field of sustainable agriculture, the UW-Hillel group helped build an educational center for coffee farmers who are currently subjected to unfair pricing by larger Western companies.
The group stayed in the village of El Horno during their project, where the people welcomed them, and spent a week of intense service and educational programming.
“Did I do as much as I could have done? Absolutely not. Obviously there is always more to be done,” said freshman Elaine Ross of Baltimore. “But I helped a little bit in El Horno and now I can show my friends what I did so maybe they’ll be inspired to do something like this next year.”
When asked, trip participants don’t consider the work they did to be incredible. However, this trip was certainly extraordinary in that it presented an opportunity for tikkun olam (reparing the world) on a global scale.
As part of follow-up programming, the Nicaraguan group will work to education other UW students on global poverty and injustice.
More information on AJWS program, including volunteer summer, can be found online at www.ajws.org.
Benzi Rubin is a junior from Boston, Mass.
Loading ...