Campus Trend toward Service Brings Large Scale Hurricane Relief

WASHINGTON, D.C. – As they do every year, tens of thousands of college students will be heading to the sunny South for their spring breaks this month. But instead of tanning on beaches and throwing house parties, more than 10,000 students will be devoting their energies to cleaning up beaches and mucking out houses destroyed by last year’s Gulf Coast hurricanes.

Over the past decade, the “alternative break” movement – through which college students perform community service projects during their vacation time – has taken off. Thousands of students each year build houses for low-income families, care for AIDS patients and tutor inner-city children. Last year’s devastating hurricanes, and the great need of communities from New Orleans to Mobile for assistance in the rebuilding effort, has added a new urgency and enthusiasm to the movement.

“Students have a tremendous amount to give to this effort, and their idealism and energy is needed in the Gulf, ” said David Eisner, CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, and Learn and Serve America. “These young people are recognizing the importance of being citizens, not simply spectators, and their growing engagement in hurricane relief bodes very well for our nation.”

For its part, the Corporation for National and Community Service has sent more than 2,000 college-aged individuals to the disaster area since September as part of its AmeriCorps program. AmeriCorps members serve with a variety of organizations including the American Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, YouthBuild, conservation corps, and many smaller faith-based and community organizations. Among other activities, they are mucking out damaged homes, clearing debris, restoring parks, putting tarps on roofs, building new homes, and training and supervising volunteers, including college students on spring break. AmeriCorps*NCCC, a team-based residential program with training in disaster relief, has sent nearly 1,400 members to the Gulf Region since September, and nearly 80 percent of its corps will be in the Gulf in March and April participating in relief and recovery efforts. AmeriCorps recently approved more than 700 new positions assisting in Gulf coast recovery and rebuilding and will be targeting college students volunteering on their spring breaks with a recruitment message asking them to consider joining AmeriCorps after their school year ends. In addition to AmeriCorps, many of the universities that offer service-learning courses supported by the Corporation’s Learn and Serve America program are sending student groups to the Gulf.

Among the organizations sending college student volunteers to the Gulf:

• Hands On Network: For its “March Madness” special initiative, the Hands On Network will be hosting more than 1,500 student volunteers from 20 different campuses at several sites along the Gulf Coast, including New Orleans and Biloxi, Miss. These spring break volunteers will perform an estimated 77,000 hours of service.

• Campus Crusade for Christ: This national organization has plans to send nearly 8,000 students to the Gulf this month, including approximately 3,800 to New Orleans and 1,800 to Pass Christian, Miss., to muck out homes, clear debris, and do minor repairs.

• Habitat for Humanity’s Collegiate Challenge: Habitat chapters around the country will be hosting 10,000 students during break, and more than 920 college students will be working in hurricane-affected areas of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

• Break Away (The Alternative Break Connection): More than 1,000 college students from 53 participating universities will be involved in spring break hurricane recovery efforts. Overall, the organization’s chapters will be sponsoring 850 spring break trips involving more than 10,200 students, a 15 percent increase over last year. “The continuing need for relief work has been a galvanizing point for campus recruitment efforts,” said Break Away’s director, Jill Piacitelli.

• MTV’s Storm Corps: For the week of March 11-17, MTV’s Storm Corps is sending 100 diverse young people to help rebuild in the Gulf community of Biloxi, Miss.

• Lutheran Disaster Relief: This organization’s "What a Relief!" spring break campaign will engage nearly 1,100 student volunteers, representing 54 different campus communities from around the country, in service projects in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi through end of March.

• Community Collaborations International: This organization has scheduled nearly 700 student volunteers to do relief and recovery work in Hancock County, Miss. – which was particularly hard hit by the storm – during their spring break. Collectively, they are scheduled to put in more than 30,000 volunteer hours in the month of March.

Organizers of spring break activities noted that they would have been able to recruit many more student volunteers to the Gulf, but that a lack of housing in the immediate disaster area prevented them from doing so. Eisner urged students coming to the Gulf to have their volunteer projects and lodging arranged in advance: “It’s vital that students coming to the Gulf are connected and coordinated with organizations already on the ground so that their projects are meaningful and they don’t waste time or resources.

The rise in the alternative break movement is part of an overall shift in interest toward volunteering and civic engagement by young adults. Over the past several years, colleges around the country have been reporting steady increases in community service levels and have attributed it to several reasons: rising idealism among youth, an increase in service-learning courses, frustration with the partisan political arena, and major catastrophic events of recent years – such as the September 11th attacks, the tsunami of 2004, and the hurricanes of 2005.

According to the latest results of UCLA’s survey of 260,000 college freshmen, two out of three (66.3 percent) entering freshmen believe it is essential or very important to help others who are in difficulty. That is the highest this figure has been in the past 25 years, and an increase of 3.9 percentage points over last year. The study also found that an all-time high of 83.2 percent volunteered at least occasionally during their high school senior year and 70.6 percent typically volunteered on a weekly basis. A recent study on volunteering by 12 to 18 year-olds conducted by the Corporation for National and Community Service found that 15.5 million or 55 percent of teens volunteered with an organization in 2004, nearly double the rate of adults.

The Corporation for National and Community Service provides opportunities for Americans of all ages and backgrounds to serve their communities and country through three programs: AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, and Learn and Serve America. Together with the USA Freedom Corps, the Corporation is working to build a culture of citizenship, service, and responsibility in America. For more information, visit www.nationalservice.gov.

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