Building on Break

Winter trips focus on both local and global service

Service is a big part of the Dickinson experience, and students never have a shortage of interesting and fulfilling trips to keep them busy. This winter, students took advantage of two trips, one in White Sulphur Springs, W. Va., and another in Cameroon. Each found students making a difference, whether in their own backyard or halfway around the globe.

West Virginia

“I wanted to go on this service trip to make an impact on someone else's life,” says Brad Zulick ’19, who, along with his lacrosse teammates, was on the West Virginia trip. “I believe I'm a very fortunate individual and feel that it’s right to give back and help those in need.”

The lacrosse team worked with Habitat for Humanity, helping build a home for a local White Sulphur Springs family—painting walls, installing flooring and siding and tackling demolition work, among other tasks—and it’s a project Greg Shildkrout ’16 (international business & management) has embraced with the team twice now.

“You’re able to see the joy and happiness these people have when they see 55 guys ready to help,” he says. “It really makes you appreciate what you have at home when you’re with people who barely have a place to live.” The men’s lacrosse team takes this weeklong service trip every other winter break, and it’s something Head Coach Dave Webster ’88 calls a hallmark of the program.

The winter service trip is in addition to the team’s annual 24-hour Volleyball-a-Thon, which for 10 years has raised money for the American Red Cross of the Cumberland Valley, and an annual day spent maintaining and rehabilitating a local stretch of the Appalachian Trail.

Cameroon

Six thousand miles away, another group recently spent two weeks in Yaoundé and Buea, Cameroon, where they worked with elementary school students. Led by Carrie Gillespie ’18 (philosophy, biology), Jiyeong “Faith” Park ’16 (self-developed major) and Donna Hughes, director of the Center for Community Service, Spirituality & Social Justice (CSSS), students immersed themselves in what Park calls an “authentic living experience.”

“We were there to build community, with the people there and with one another, and to immerse ourselves in the culture,” says Park, who studied abroad in Cameroon last year and has a long history with service work. “Through community service in high school, I became aware that I just wanted to do more.”

Gillespie took part in an Alabama-based service trip last year, and she finds that whether in the American South or western Africa, building relationships and gaining understanding are keys to service trip success.

“There's always something to learn about any other culture you go into,” she says. “And at the end of every service trip, I feel like I've learned so much by placing myself into a completely new environment.” In that new Cameroon environment, in conjunction with the nongovernmental organization United Action for Children, Dickinsonians spent time reading to young Cameroonians in the classroom and renovating a classroom, which included helping to build a kitchen—“pretty much doing whatever the school needed us to do to help,” says Park.

“We really lived in the moment,” Park says, noting that because there was no cell service and no Internet, the group of 12 students didn’t have the usual distractions. “It really fostered community and facilitated meaningful conversation, and every night we'd come together to reflect on our service and have really good talks about social justice issues.”

The group split its time between Yaoundé, where Dickinson has a study-abroad center, and the seaside city of Buea, where they took some time to hike in the foothills of Mount Cameroon and cool off in the Gulf of Guinea. With the sights and sounds of Cameroon now behind them, Park—who led a similar trip to Belize last year and is now the office coordinator for CSSS—says she hopes the meaning behind the trip stayed with students after their return flight home.

“Service trips are really powerful,” she says. “And we’d like people who go on service trips to come back and apply their experiences here in the Carlisle area, through volunteering or going on other service trips. We don't want it to be just an amazing one-time experience but something to be used throughout your lifetime.”

The position of director of the Center for Community Service, Spirituality & Social Justice at Dickinson is supported by the United Methodist Church. 

Learn more

• Service Trips
• Center for Service, Spirituality & Social Justice
• Opportunities for Engagement
• "Eat, Sleep, Serve, Repeat"
• Dickinson in Cameroon
• "Dialogue, Discovery & Religious Life"
• Latest News

Published February 9, 2016