News Briefs: CSU students participate in Alternative Break program

Published April 2010 Vol. 14 Issue 4

Students from Colorado State University in Fort Collins participated in the university’s Alternative Break program in various locations around the country during spring break last month.

More than 150 students participated in the 13 volunteer service projects that they helped create.

Volunteer vacations are growing in popularity in many parts of the world. Especially now in the U.S., when many travelers don’t have the funds to travel luxuriously, people are turning to volunteer vacations as a less expensive way to see the world.

Although most people associate volunteer vacations with opportunities over seas, usually in a third-world country, there are many prospects right in our own backyard.

This year’s projects included: rebuilding homes in the St. Bernard Parish of New Orleans with the United Way; Give Kids the World in Kissimmee, Fla., an organization helping to make the wishes come true for children with life-threatening illnesses; working emergency water stations with Humane Borders at the Arizona-Mexico border; and volunteering at one of the nation’s largest homeless shelters with Community for Creative Non-Violence in Washington, D.C.

More than 55 million Americans have participated in a volunteer based vacation as of 2009, according to the Travel Associations of America.

-- Kimberly Gunning