BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – At 5 a.m. on Saturday, March 15, 50 Illinois Wesleyan University students and 10 faculty and staff members will board a charter bus headed for their spring break destination: a work site in a New Orleans district heavily hit by hurricane Katrina. They will volunteer with Operation Nehemiah through Friday, March 21.
Upon arrival, participants in the program known as Alternative Spring Break (ASB) will explore the Ninth Ward and French Quarter regions of New Orleans in which they will work, said ASB sponsor Kevin Clark, assistant dean of students.
Most of the volunteers will perform a variety of tasks that will change daily, but special arrangements have been made for a group of nursing students and Associate Professor of Nursing Kathy Scherck. “They are going to work specifically with healthcare issues,” said Clark. “They will be able to go into the community and use the skills they have from classroom training and clinical experience.”
“We don’t know exactly what we will be doing while we are there so I am keeping a really open mind to everything,” said Sara Baldocchi, a senior psychology major from Glen Ellyn, Ill.
The trip was arranged through Break Away, a service trip organization company that provides a list of sites across the country and the world that want to work with or have worked with colleges or universities. ASB programs have been available at schools across the United States for a number of years, but the program was inaugurated at Illinois Wesleyan last year when Clark, Director of Fraternity and Sorority Life Danielle Kuglin, and a student organized an ASB trip to Pascagoula, Miss.
ASB publicity began at first-year orientation and during the first week of classes last August. “I think catching students right away made a difference in the number of volunteers,” said Clark, who expects that the program will continue to grow in future years.