What 192 Students Did With Their Spring Break (this year)

By Laurie Morrissey
Photos By Larry Luxner

Editor’s Note—Associate editor Laurie Morrissey joined nearly 200 students for a week in early March for Spring Break Alternative 2005. As a fully participating member of the SBA experience in Honduras, Laurie traveled, ate, slept, worked, and reflected with the group and participated in months of planning and meetings leading up to the trip.

Jess Costa could see her breath in the cold, dry air of the barn. She’d expected it to be chilly in Maine, but not this cold. It had been 2 below zero when she and her fellow students woke up that early March morning. A cone of snow had formed beneath an empty window pane. But everyone bundled up and went to work, feeding and brushing goats, cleaning barns, and building shelves.

Nearly 2,500 miles away, Jess’s roommate, Tracie Keenan, was coated in a fragrant mixture of sunscreen, bug spray, sweat, and dirt. Shovel in hand, she took her turn digging a seven-foot outhouse hole in the red clay soil of Los Chiles, Costa Rica.

The two juniors are among the nearly 200 Saint Anselm College students who fanned out across the U.S. and Central America this year to work in homeless shelters, soup kitchens, Head Start programs, nursing homes, community centers, orphanages, and inner city schools as part of the college’s Spring Break Alternative (SBA) program. They majored in everything from accounting to theology. Many were first-timers; others were going for their fourth year. And, judging from reports of SBA alums, every one of them was having an experience they’d never forget. For some, it would be the compass that would guide them for years to come, influencing lifestyles, careers, and family life.

SBA is one of the dozens of activities that Saint Anselm College (designated as a “college with a conscience” by The Princeton Review) offers students who want to volunteer in the community. However, it differs in many ways from other volunteer experiences. Students live and work together 24 hours a day, with their peers as leaders. They are in an unfamiliar environment where they may be challenged to use a foreign language (in Lawrence, Mass., as well as Costa Rica). Most importantly, according to Campus Ministry director and SBA Program coordinator Sue Gabert ’91, SBA is faith-based. The program is focused on enhancing the personal and spiritual development of the participants. Group prayer and a formal reflection session are incorporated into each day.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6