Traveling abroad is a life-changing experience for many students, and Alternative Service Breaks (ASB) is one of the best ways to do it at the University of Idaho.
“It changed my life,” sophomore Ayomipo Kayode-Popoola said. “It changed my perspective on life. It changed my perspective of people.”
ASB trips are programs offered during winter, spring and summer breaks, said Natalie Magnus, program coordinator for the Volunteer Center. Winter ASB trips are the only international trips offered in the program, she said. Students who are accepted into the winter ASB program spend two weeks during their winter break internationally volunteering.
“It’s difficult to describe, but it really is a life-changing experience,” Magnus said. “You come back with new ideas, new perspective and new friends.”
Junior Zachary Lien said he believes that ASB trips provide a greater experience than anything else that can be done on campus.
“What I learned about Guatemala and the culture I couldn’t have read about in a 3,000-page book on Guatemala,” Lien said.
For Kayode-Popoola, rural development and service are one of her passions, so when she found out about ASB trips at the International Studies orientation, she knew she had to apply. Kayode-Popoola said she traveled to Guatemala and worked in several small communities throughout the area. She said she worked with traditional Mayan women weavers to protect their workplace from flooding in the rainy season.
“It was impactful to see just how hardworking these people were,” Kayode-Popoola said. “Children were carrying pails of water trying to help out. We were working alongside them.”
The applications to apply for the program go live at 8 a.m. Friday, Magnus said. There are 30 open spots for the trips, which will be traveling to Ecuador, Nicaragua and the Philippines this year. Magnus said this is the third time ASB trips will be returning to Nicaragua and the first time returning to Ecuador. The Philippines is a brand new location, Magnus said, and students traveling there will be working with communities affected by typhoon Yolanda in 2013.
“It will be a little bit of disaster relief,” Magnus said.
Magnus said the program costs $1,250 per student, but there are awards offered for students. UI President Chuck Staben made a donation for first-time service breakers as well, Magnus said, so that helps alleviate the financial burden on students. That fee is also all-inclusive, Magnus said. Including transportation to and from the Spokane airport, where flights take off from. Mikayla Johnson, who was in the same group as Lien and Kayode-Popoola to Guatemala, said the memory that stands out the most to her was at the women’s weaving compound.
“We had a schedule fun day for kayaking and other stuff, but the entire group was ready to forfeit their fun day to finish the wall,” Johnson said. “The fact that we were all so committed to the project was really cool.”
Johnson said that all the costs, the hard work, everything that the students have to do to participate in the ASB trips is more than worth the human connection a student wouldn’t get by just being a tourist.
“When I went on my first ASB trip, I became certain that I was going to go on an ASB trip every break,” Lien said.
Jessica Darney, a fifth-year biology major has been on seven ASB trips, three of those internationally in Nicaragua, Peru and Guatemala. She has almost embodied Lien’s statement. However, of all her international experiences, she said her greatest experience was during her winter 2015 trip to Nicaragua.
She said one night there was a community meeting where the students and the community members openly shared what it was like to live the way they did.
“It made me realize that we’re all human,” Darney said. “We all want to be happy, we don’t want to feel pain. A person is a person, no matter where they live.”
The application deadline is Sept. 18 and can be found at uidaho.edu/volunteer.
Claire Whitley
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