Nine Humber students and two leaders travelled to New Orleans last year to help build homes. Photo courtesy Angela Spine

BY NATASHIA FEARON
IN FOCUS REPORTER

A group of 34 students and group leaders are volunteering their time and labour in the Dominican Republic and Mississippi next year on an alternative reading week trip, said Angela Spine, residence life co-ordinator.

“It’s a great way to give back to the world – to help those that don’t have the same blessings as you have,” she said.

Spine said students will travel to Mississippi in February and assist Habitat for Humanity by building homes for victims of Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed thousands of houses in the area in 2005.

Students travelling to the Dominican Republic will assist a company called Orphanage Outreach by teaching English in local schools and caring for children.

“We do get a little bit of time to see wherever we’re visiting. Maybe a day or so to do a little bit of tourist stuff, but the majority of the focus is the volunteering,” said Spine.

She said trips can cost students up to $1,700, which includes stay, food and flight. “We do organize fundraising and that helps subsidize some of the cost for the students.”

Jensen Andrews, 20, third-year early childhood education at Guelph-Humber, will be going on the Dominican Republic trip. She said she’s counting on it being a positive experience.

“I hope to learn a little more about myself and have an impact on someone else’s life there,” Andrews said.

“It’ll be hard to leave the kids I get to know after a week,” she said. “That will probably be the hardest part.”

The program began last year when a group of students travelled to New Orleans to help build houses. “It was definitely life changing,” Spine said.

Kyle Miller, 22, second-year broadcast television and videography student, said going to New Orleans last year was a great learning experience.

“It was all good,” Miller said. “I don’t think there was anything I didn’t like.”

Miller said he stayed in a school that was restored after being destroyed by a flood when Hurricane Katrina hit.

“It’s not a five-star hotel, but you learn a lot about the area and the culture,” he said.

“We experienced the New Orleans culture, the food and the music. It’s probably one of the coolest things I’ve ever heard.”

Darryl Rose, 19, general arts and science university transfer student, said he wouldn’t spend his spring break building houses – he’d rather rest. He said if he had a choice between an all-inclusive spring break and an alternative spring break, he would choose to vacation in Amsterdam.

But students who went wouldn’t change the experience.
It’s a “once in a lifetime thing,” said Miller.