Giving to Learn, Learning to Give

service trips winter 2014

Students reflect on recent winter service trips

By MaryAlice Bitts-Jackson

During her first year at Dickinson, environmental-science major Kelly McIntyre ’14 took a service trip to Alabama, hoping that she’d return with a few new skills and new friends with common interests.  Today, she’s one of Dickinson’s many student-volunteers who lend a hand in communities in Carlisle and beyond.

McIntyre is one of the nearly 70 Dickinson students and administrators who spent their winter breaks across country or across the globe so they could help communities most in need.

The house that lacrosse built

Fifty-three members of the men’s lacrosse team helped build new homes for the needy at Habitat for Humanity’s Almost Heaven work camp. “It was an incredibly positive learning experience and team-building opportunity,” said Head Coach Dave Webster, who has led lacrosse service trips every other year since 2006.

Brian Gleason ’14, a policy-management major, and Brian Cannon ’14, an economics major, and political-science major Youssef Gorgi ‘14 were among the senior lacrosse players who have participated in Dickinson’s annual Vollehyball-a-thon throughout their time at Dickinson, and also helped build houses in Baltimore during the team’s 2012 trip. Between the three teammates, they’ve raised more than $40,000 for the National Cancer Society and the Red Cross thus far.

In West Virginia, Cannon’s team installed a railing and doors and built stairs, while Gleason’s and Gorgi’s group installed doors, hung kitchen cabinets, insulated an attic and painted. “The project brought our group closer, and we had a lot of fun doing it,” said Gorgi.

“It was very rewarding to put work into these homes, knowing that someone is going to have a warm place to live,” Gleason added. “I think most of the guys on our team would do it all over again.”

Ecuadorian adventure

Sixteen students and two administrators spent two weeks of the winter break in Ecuador, where they worked side by side with Ecuadorian volunteers at two rural elementary school, laying tile for an outdoor cafeteria, building and painting rooms, planting a garden and building a security fence. They also had a chance to play with the children and venture to a cloud forest in a national park and to  Inagaprica, home to Incan ruins.

“We went there to serve, but we also learned much about Ecuador, the people of Cuenca and the ways we could begin to understand other cultures,” said Frieda Adu-Brempong ’16, a policy-management major.

“The hardest part was saying goodbye—I felt like I had made 50 new friends,” said Madeline Chandler ‘16, who majors in Spanish and psychology. “I have a newfound passion to make a difference in the world.”

McIntryre can relate. “Before my [first service] trip, I was not really pushing myself to make the most of this short period of time I have in college,” she explained. “It opened my eyes to the people I had been missing out on, and all that I could learn from them.”


Published February 3, 2014