With Fall Break coming, opportunities for amusement and excitement on days off are endless. While lounging around in sweatpants watching reruns of classic TV shows may sound comforting, Ball State University's Alternative Fall Break program offers a, well, alternative and more productive way to spend your weekend.
AFB, a branch of Student Life and Student Voluntary Services, allows students who wish to spend Fall Break more constructively to travel with other student volunteers to an area in the Midwest and cooperate on a community service project.
Emily Carter, one of two graduate assistants involved with this year's AFB, said, "[AFB] is for students who want to do something meaningful with their break. We aim to do service projects and reach out to the community."
In the past, AFB has been part of more outdoor-themed events where students have joined efforts in preserving nature.
The 2005 trip to the Natural Conservancy in Kankakee Sands, Ind., assigned participants to restoration duties such as stump and decayed crop removal and the cleaning and planting of seeds in an attempt to return overgrown farmland back to its original state.
"It was a great learning experience," Amanda Estes, a junior elementary education major, said. "We were not sure of what to expect when we went, but we ended up learning a lot about prairies, invasive species and seeds."
The program has undergone a change of pace, however: Future trips will focus more on working alongside actual members of the community they are helping. Carter said that former AFB participants enjoyed the service projects but were not satisfied with the nature emphasis.
"They wanted more human contact," Carter said. "Now we are doing something more people-focused."
This year, 14 undergraduate students and two graduate students will be traveling to Arcadia Community Center in downtown Louisville, Ky. The center, built in 2000, is located in a neighborhood that had for years been associated with drugs and crime, Carter said. The area now serves as residence mostly for immigrants and refugees from such regions as Kosovo, Somalia, Guatemala, Honduras, Sudan, Iraq and Afghanistan. In response to the neighborhood's demographics, the center offers services for the immigrants such as translators and interpreters, programs explaining how to become legal citizens, English lessons and other presentations for adults and children alike.
One of the projects the Ball State students will assist in is the set-up and teardown of the center's annual Cultural Fair, which promotes cultural awareness and acceptance of all people's backgrounds. The fair showcases crafts, food and dancing from various countries, Carter said.
Sunday, AFB participants will visit Jefferson Memorial Forest in Fairdale, Ky. to get down and dirty with forest restoration. Other activities scheduled are the leadership-building Alpine Tower Adventure, the forest's 52-foot climbing structure, and a Halloween party at the Arcadia Community Center that evening for the children in the neighborhood.
Monday the students help during the center's afterschool tutoring program, an event that the students are looking forward to because of the human interaction required.
"It's all about the people for me," Estes said. "I know they are going to change my life, and hopefully I can do something good for them."
Estes, a member of the AFB Advisory Board, said she believes it is because of the change from nature to people that the number of students going on the trip jumped from nine undergraduate students last year to 14 this time around.
"AFB is more appealing this year than last [year] because we are helping a community of immigrants and refugees," said Estes. "Last year, though we were continuing someone's dream, we were working with restoring natural prairie lands, not people."
For more information about Jefferson Memorial Forest: memorialforest.com
For more information about Arcadia Community Center: arcadiacommunitycenter.org
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