Unity College students participate in alternative spring break

12 college students, one week of community service

Mar 16, 2011

Brooks — For the fifth year in a row, students from Unity College organized an alternative spring break. These self-motivated and hard-working students are traveling together Saturday, March 12 through Saturday, March 19 to organizations in Unity, Brooks, Bangor and Brunswick to do whatever needs to be done. They bring their own food, sleep wherever there is room and hit the ground running the next morning with positive, productive energy.

Junior and co-leader for this year’s trip, Kelly Barber, explained much of the work that goes into planning and preparing for this week is student-initiated and because it is all about community service, the Student Government Association provides funds for gas and food.

“We’ve had so much support, like people at the school that heard about it or when this project has been proposed to SGA to get funding,” she said. “We’ve gotten so much support and we’re still trying to get it established as an actual school program.”

The students have developed a mentoring system to sustain the alternative spring break from year to year. The group leader each year is assisted by a co-leader who then becomes the group leader the following year. This year’s leader, senior Hannia Candelario, is mentoring Barber. This is the third year on the trip for both of them, as well as for junior Chris Froehly.

“It’s a great way to see a different side of people besides the academic side,” Froehly said. “Things have been fun so far and I’m looking forward to doing it again next year.”

Candelario will give a presentation about the service trip to the Unity College Board of Trustees and her senior Environmental Challenge class. She considers it a very worthwhile and satisfying experience.

“It’s very rewarding just to see how many people actually, instead of going home or to warm places, they decide to come and volunteer,” she said. “And it really pays off, to see all the work that I put into it and other people really appreciate it.”

After volunteering at Sebasticook Regional Land Trust, Unity Barn Raisers, Unity Volunteer Fire Department, and the Volunteer Regional Food Pantry in Unity, the group arrived on the night of Monday, March 14 at Newforest Institute in Brooks and spent the next day working there.

Newforest is an educational non-profit organization dedicated to the restoration of mutually sustaining relationships between people and the land. At the height of the growing season, Newforest is bustling with activity: staff, apprentices, and volunteers working in the gardens, visitors touring the farm and participating in workshops and events.

In the winter, things are fairly quiet at Newforest with minimum staffing and fewer events. On the cusp of spring, as the days lengthen and the snow melts, this infusion of spirit, community, and vitality on a clear, sunny day was a joyous celebration of the shift back toward lively, green days.

This is the second year Newforest has been a host site for Unity College's alternative spring break. This year the work at Newforest was focused on firewood: hauling, limbing, bucking, splitting and stacking. The teamwork and output were impressive. The group also helped with weeding beds in the movable green house, raking out the chickens’ winter shelter, laying down fresh bedding and a few other tasks.

They paused in their work only for lunch and, after a proud group photo in the freshly stocked wood shed, they were off to their next volunteer destination. The rest of their week will be spent at Spruce Run Domestic Violence Project in Bangor, Bangor Animal Shelter, Acadia National Park, Midcoast Homeless Shelter and Brunswick Animal Shelter.