Emmanuel Students Return from Alternative Spring Break
March 23, 2010
This spring, 60 Emmanuel community members participated in the College's Alternative Spring Break (ASB) program, which sends three different groups to service sites around the country during the week of March 8th.
Nearly five years after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the city of the Super Bowl Champion Saints continued to be the destination of choice for students participating in Emmanuel College's ASB program. Desire among students to volunteer for nonprofit organizations in lieu of their spring vacation break remained high, with the number of students seeking those opportunities more than doubling the available slots.
"Our student volunteers will go anywhere and do anything to help people who are suffering the effects of devastation or who are living in abject poverty," said Deirdre Bradley-Turner, associate director of community service and service learning. "They could be relaxing on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean but they choose to give up the traditional spring break for the opportunity to serve people in need. It makes us very proud as they go off as ambassadors of Emmanuel College."
This March represents the fifth trip by Emmanuel students to Louisiana's famed locale, which despite its Mardi Gras and the Saints, remains today a place in need of aid, ravaged by one of the strongest and deadliest hurricane's in U.S. history. The volunteers once again stayed with the Sisters of the Holy Family, an African American Congregation of Pontifical Status that centers on educating youth and caring for the aged, the poor and the most abject of society, working throughout their two independent facilities for low-income senior citizens in the city.
In addition to New Orleans, Emmanuel volunteers traveled to Wheeling, WV and Phoenix, AZ. A group also stayed in Boston to serve as part of the college's Boston Immersion Program. Emmanuel also hosted its annual Alternative Spring Break Commissioning in the college's chapel on March 2nd.
