Explorer Cafe Spring 2014: March 19, 2014

DuPre, C. (2010). Campus commons: Alternative break service trips. About Campus, 15(3), 25-28. doi:10.1002/abc.20026

Displacing activism? the impact of international service trips on understandings of social change. (2011). Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 6(1), 5-19. doi:10.1177/1746197910397915

Susan Crawford Sullivan, Alison Bryant Ludden, & Royce A. Singleton Jr. (2013). The impact of institutional mission on student volunteering. Journal of College Student Development, 54(5), 511-526.

The transforming self: Service narratives and identity change in emerging adulthood. (2012). Journal of Adolescent Research, 27(1), 18-43. doi:10.1177/0743558410384732

Nancy Blattner. (2013). There is a promise to keep in belize. Kansas City: National Catholic Reporter Publishing Company

La Salle University Service Trips

The mission of the Lasallian Service Trips is to give students the opportunity to gain knowledge and first-hand experience of social justice issues, both at home and abroad, through meaningful service done in partnership with local communities to better live our common Lasallian values of faith, service, and community.
UMAS offers students opportunities to confront the challenges that many local communities face.  These service trips embody the Lasallian vision of intellectual and spiritual development by working together to foster growth, understanding, and change as students experience a deeper sense of what it means to live and work in solidarity with a community.

Lasallian Service trips are dedicated to living out Lasallian values by gaining understanding of the global community and the social justice issues that affect that community.  Through capacity building efforts, La Salle students discover the importance of giving back while learning about themselves and others.  Students partner with local communities and immerse themselves in cultures by building relationships with the people they serve.  Lasallian service trips strive to improve the quality of life within the global community by acting on the natural human instinct to help each other.

Last year, approximately 100 La Salle students traveled across the country and globe to participate in student-led service trips. The students who participate in Blackfeet Montana, Estudiantes Unidos, Habitat for Humanity, Project Appalachia, or Project Mapendo spend their spring break or a week or more after school ends performing a variety of service projects for different special needs groups.
All of La Salle’s service trips are funded through on- and off-campus fundraising activities, such as a live auction, a pizza and cookie dough sale, and “basket bidding,” where different groups and people on campus put together baskets of goodies to be raffled. Service trips are fantastic opportunities for you to see other parts of our world and help those in need beyond your immediate community. Here’s a little about each service trip:

• Blackfeet Montana is a spring trip that immerses the attendees in Native American culture while tutoring and mentoring students at De La Salle Blackfeet School.
• Equipo Esperanza (Team Hope) is a Spring Break program which partners with Village Mountain Mission where students will work side-by-side with local communities in a variety of community development initiatives in Luperon, Dominican Republic.
• Habitat for Humanity is a service trip as part of the national organization that works with local people to help construct or rehabilitate affordable housing in rural regions of the United States.
• Project Appalachia is a Spring Break service trip aimed at rehabilitation of homes and building relationships with people in the Appalachian region, now in its 37th year.
• Project Mapendo is a three week summer program where students work with a De La Salle Christian Brother-sponsored school community in Nyeri, Kenya, Africa to work with educational projects with the students at the school and to work at construction projects on the school compound.