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The Alternative School Break Club (ASB) has planned four trips this school year, two over the January interim session and two during spring break.
From Jan. 15-22, one group of students will go to Danville, Va., to build and restore houses with Telamon Corporation. Telamon constructs and renovates houses, which are then sold to low- and middle-income families.
The team will include Natalie Kamphaus ’05 (Athens, Ga.), a history and religious studies major; Sandra Goldman ’05 (Needham, Mass.), an economics and business major; Emily Allen ’06 (Califon, N.J.), a government and law major; Elizabeth Litchfield ’05 (North Easton, Mass.), an English major; Ingrid DeVries ’05 (Hopewell Junction, N.Y.), a biochemistry major; Emily White ’05 (Shutesbury, Mass.), a double major in English and Spanish; Joanna Vetreno ’06 (Oakland, N.J.), an electrical and computer engineering major; Jillian Carinci ’08 (Wilmington, Del.), a biology major; Kathleen Reddington ’08 (Jersey City, N.J.), a French major; and Christina Morley ’06 (Westwood, N.J.), a psychology major. Amy Ahart, assistant director of Student Life Programs and special assistant to the dean of students, will also attend.
The second interim group will complement the Engineers Without Borders’ ongoing project to provide a local water supply to villages in Honduras.
“ASB will be assisting in the construction of a grain house, which will be used to accommodate volunteers when coming to work on the water installation project,” says Stephanie Cote, Landis Community Outreach Center coordinator and ASB adviser, who will be part of the team.
“I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to assist in an amazing long-term effort that will ultimately benefit a village of over 230 people,” she adds.
Engineers Without Borders members Fidel Maltez ’05 (Miami, Fla.) and Matt Verbyla ’06 (Unionville, Conn.), civil and environmental engineering majors, and Taha Jiwaji ’08 (Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania) arrived in Yoro, Honduras, shortly after the New Year, where they are collecting the necessary data to finish the project designs.
ASB students arrived Jan. 8 and are working with Hondurans on the grain house. Both Lafayette groups will return on Jan. 16.
For Christa Kelleher ’08 (Tigard, Ohio), this is her first Alternative School Break trip.
“I hope to gain a little knowledge about a culture and lifestyle so different from our own,” she says. “I also want to get a feel for this type of lifestyle and work, because I would like to join the Peace Corps after I graduate.”
Other students on the ASB team are: Emily Groves ’05 (Madison, N.J.), an English major; Odakwei Mills ’06 (Baltimore, Md.), an international affairs major; and Jackie Golden ’07 (Latham, N.Y.), a biology major.
Over spring break, ASB will return to Sea Island, S.C., for the fifth time to work with Habitat for Humanity, where students will work on various stages of house construction.
“I joined ASB because I wanted to give back to the community at large,” says Veronica Hart ’05 (Sewanee, Tenn.), a double major in economics & business and Spanish. “It seemed fitting to make my last spring break at Lafayette meaningful by doing a service project.”
Other students scheduled to make the trip to Sea Island include Lauren Cash ’07 (Blue Bell, Pa.), a psychology major; Jillian Gaeta ’07 (Middletown, N.J.), an international affairs major; Frank Giannelli ’07 (Berkeley Heights, N.J.), an A.B. engineering major; Huong Nguyen ’08 (Hanoi, Vietnam); Sara Windish ’08 (Wayne, N.J.); Meredith Jeffers ’05 (Letham, N.Y.), an English major; Kristin Radziwanowski ’07 (East Windsor, N.J.), a biology major; and Steve Caruso ’06 (Middletown, N.J.), a double major in biology and economics & business. Kevin Worthen, associate dean of students and director of student life administration, will accompany the students.
Other students will travel to Homestead, Fla., during spring break to volunteer with the Outpost and Wildlife Refuge in the Everglades, working on environmental and animal protection projects.
“We will be working with animals and birds at the outpost,” says Emily Fogelberg ’05 (Plymouth, Minn.), a double major in economics & business and history. “I am looking forward to the opportunity to visit a new place, meet new people, learn about the issues confronting the wildlife in the Everglades, and contributing to environmental preservation and education.”
For Daina White ’07 (Montvale, N.J.), a geology and environmental geosciences major, this will be her second ASB trip. She previously went to the Gesundheit! Institute in West Virginia last May.
“I have always loved the environment and wish to preserve the quality of outdoor life,” she says. “I also love animals and have wanted to work with them, so this trip is a dream for me.”
Joining her will be Long Tran ’08 (Allentown, Pa.); Allison Kramer ’08 (Cherry Hill, N.J.); Rasheim Donaldson ’06 (New York, N.Y.), an anthropology and sociology major; Martha Petre ’08 (Fredonia, N.Y.); Amy Goldstein ’05 (Latham, N.Y.), a neuroscience major; and Rasheim Donaldson ’06 (New York, N.Y.), an anthropology and sociology major. Dan Ruch, AmeriCorps*VISTA staff member in the Landis Center and team adviser for Kids in the Community, a Lafayette after-school program for children, will accompany the students on this trip.
KIC and ASB are among the 34 ongoing programs coordinated by Lafayette’s Landis Community Outreach center.
ASB has been a staple at Lafayette since students decided in spring 1993 to do something about the devastation left by Hurricane Hugo. Although a blizzard kept the students from traveling to Florida, the idea survived and flourished in 1994 with the first ASB trip to Honduras, where a group of students worked with the family of an international student.
Trips vary by year, but one element remains the same: Students make the ultimate decisions.
Last year’s projects included working on housing construction, which involved roofing and framing windows and doorways, with Sea Island Habitat for Humanity in Sea Island, S.C., during January interim; laying the house foundation for a single mother and her children in partnership with Habitat for Humanity International in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, which included raising $4,500 (in addition to travel costs) to provide the building supplies, over spring break; assisting the only YMCA on a Native American reservation (Sioux YMCA in Dupree, S.D.) in landscaping projects and the coordination of activities for the after-school program, over spring break; and working at the site of the Gesundheit! Institute (Hillsboro, W.V.), doing various projects, which included planting crops and constructing yurts (circus-like tent structures) to house a summer program, in May.