Students To Spend Break With Charity

By: Andrew Peters

Posted: 10/27/05

Twenty UConn students planned for their Spring Break vacations Monday, when they registered for the Habitat for Humanity's annual Collegiate Challenge, "the nation's largest alternative spring break trip," according to Habitat for Humanity's web site. The students will join over 12,000 other volunteers from colleges nationwide this March to build affordable housing for those in need.

The Collegiate Challenge, which "booked in a minute," will head to Lakeland, Fla. to create shelter for the homeless, according to UConn Habitat for Humanity President Marlene Rispoli, a 5th-semester dual business marketing and communication sciences major. UConn's volunteers will stay with other college students at local churches during the trip. Members have traveled to the Overtown district of Miami and the outskirts of Los Angeles in past years for the same purpose.

UConn's challenge team is composed of active Habitat for Humanity members and will be run by five returning volunteers. While this year's trip is already full, new members are given preference in service projects, according to Rispoli.

"Everything's a team effort," she said. This year's team will include the five veteran coordinators along with 15 new members.

Since 1976, Georgia-based Habitat for Humanity has been responsible for building over 200,000 homes and housing over 1 million people in "simple, decent and affordable shelter," according to a press release.

For participants at UConn and around the country, a Spring Break's-worth of service provides the reward of a lifetime. The week's building spree leaves underprivileged communities with reasonably-priced housing that will remain for decades, even generations. Students too, leave with new friends and memories they will never forget.

"An elderly lady walked by me with a shopping cart full of her things," Rispoli remembers of the 2003 trip. "Her friends qualified for a home and we were working on one of them. She told me that she used to have a home, but Overton just got too poor. With tears in her eyes she thanked us for being there, bringing the neighborhood back together."

Despite the average student maybe having some reluctance to do community service over Spring Break, Collegiate Challenge veterans attest that the trip is no sacrifice.

"It's a great opportunity," Rispoli said. "We still get a Spring Break. We all like to travel, but it's about getting away and helping the homeless. Watching the homeless walk around us as we work is motivational enough."

Habitat for Humanity's service programs are attracting even more students to the UConn chapter, which is already around 400 strong.

"I've always been very interested in community service," said Devorah Donnell, a 1st-semester physiology and neurobiology major. "I really hope to get involved in Habitat for Humanity while here at UConn, and would definitely be interested in one of those trips over our vacations. Why not use your free time to help someone? Seeing the people's faces or even just imagining their smiles makes it all so worthwhile."

The Lakeland trip will cost somewhere between $200 and $400 per student, though fundraisers will help offset costs. Not surprisingly, the logistics are afterthoughts to the Challenge team. For Rispoli and the rest, it's just "a group of people with the same goals, and the chance of a lifetime to go on Spring Break."