On Saturday, March 1, more than 160 Saint Anselm College students boarded planes and minivans bound for Boston, South Dakota, Costa Rica and elsewhere to spend their spring break helping those in need.
The students traveled to 11 sites to spend their vacation week serving in soup kitchens, tending to the elderly, building bunk beds and rehabilitating homes. They will work with children at the Benedictine School for Exceptional Children, in Maryland; St. Joan of Arc School, in New Orleans, and Camp Glenmary, in Mississippi. They will help inner city youth at St. Benedict Preparatory School, in Newark, N.J., and work with the homeless and disadvantaged at the Boston Rescue Mission.
Students will learn as much as they help. At the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, for instance, Spring Break Alternative participants will study the ways of the Lakota. (To follow the SBA experience at Pine Ridge, see the posts of Cory True '09 on the Saint Anselm blog.) Others will learn about Costa Rican culture as they work with the Christian Foundation for Children and Aging. All of them will learn about disadvantage, poverty, challenge, resilience, joy and great hope.
Students take the lessons they learn in Saint Anselm's classrooms and make them tangible through service, said Susan Gabert, director of Campus Ministry, which has sponsored SBA for 16 years.
“They may be building a home, but we’re really trying to build character and virtue,” she said. “We are asking our students to ask deep questions about who they are called to be and what it means to live a meaningful life.”