Students Spring Into Action
More than 300 Westmont students are spending spring break in Mississippi, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Ensenada, Mexico, and Santa Barbara, volunteering for various service projects.
New this year is a student-led service project in Santa Barbara, Spring Break on the West Side. More than 40 students are volunteering at the Village Apartments, low-income housing complexes on Santa Barbara’s west side. Students collected $100 in quarters to help residents with laundry, painted the local community center and washed residents’cars. They have also been working with Looking Good Santa Barbara, a city-sponsored organization. Armed with rakes and brooms, students have been cleaning streets and underpasses, filling 17 bags of green waste in one day. In the afternoons, students lead Kid’s Club as well as a program for teenagers that has included a scavenger hunt on State Street and hip-hop lessons. This week, volunteers will join the local teenagers to install a playground that has been purchased by Community Health Empowerment Committee, the Village’s leadership group.
About 210 Westmont students and community volunteers are in Ensenada constructing homes, operating medical and dental clinics, leading a vacation Bible school, running haircutting clinics and competing in sports events. More than 5,000 students have participated in Potter’s Clay, an annual student-organized service trip, since it began 32 years ago.
About three dozen Westmont students are serving with Spring Break in the City (SBIC), volunteering in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Students with SBIC will sleep and work at City Crossroads, a center for multi-ethnic and low-income families in the inner city of San Francisco. Student volunteers provide youngsters with a safe haven to gather for recreation, study, guidance and mentoring.
Sixteen students and two staff members are with Racial Equality and Justice (REJ), traveling to Jackson, Miss., and Birmingham, Ala. The REJ group is in its sixth year serving with the John M. Perkins Foundation in Mississippi and learning about Christian community development and racial and economic justice. Students will continue working on the Zechariah 8 project, which refurbishes homes for underserved families as a pathway to home ownership and provides enriching after-school programs for children and youth.
“We don’t want students to take their memories of this trip and put them away in a shoe box,” says Elena Yee, director of intercultural programs. “We want the experience to infuse their lives and change their perspective.”
Not only are the service trips student-initiated and led, but students are required to raise money for each trip, the most expensive is $1,000 for the REJ trip to the South.
Students return to class Monday, March 23.