Alternative Service Breaks volunteers cleaning up a beach in Hobe Sound, Fla., in 2023.

ASB

A Year Since COVID-19 Hiatus Ended, Alternative Service Breaks Program Continues to Strengthen Bonds

This year, student volunteers will travel to Georgia, North Carolina, Illinois, and beyond for a week of service

For nearly 40 years, when many students travel back home or go on international vacations for spring break, a number of Terriers have opted to spend their time off volunteering throughout the country. 

This year is no different, as more than 60 students are participating in the Alternative Service Breaks (ASB) program, a weeklong service experience running from Sunday, March 10, to Saturday, March 16. ASB, which operates under the BU Community Service Center (CSC), allows students the opportunity to immerse themselves in community service alongside their peers.

In the early 2000s, a group of volunteers planted trees along the Florida coastline to prevent erosion during their service trip; eight years later, Orpheo Speer, CSC director, was a chaperone on a trip to Hobe Sound, Fla., where those seeds had transformed into saplings.

“We were graced with that opportunity to be able to continue that legacy,” says Speer. “I like to think that those trees are still doing well.”

ASB matches participating students with partnering organizations in underserved communities. This year’s partners are Friedman Place, a center for the blind in Chicago; Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in New Orleans; Rebuilding Macon, a home-rehabilitation service for low-income homeowners, in Macon, Ga.; Shawnee National Forest in Shawnee, Ill.; and Terrell Lane Middle School in Louisburg, N.C.

ASB has collaborated with many of their community partners for 20 years, but Speer says that the COVID-19 pandemic has presented significant challenges in maintaining relationships. “We’re really focused on quality over quantity as we rebuild these relationships and explore ways that we can continue to support some of our long-standing partners,” he says.

Meanwhile, the student-led ASB team has been preparing for this year’s trips since June 2023—almost a year in advance. They decided to downsize to five locations to prioritize filling all the volunteer spots for the community sponsors.

It’s a challenge “just to make sure to try to get everything set as early as possible because the later you put it off, the later you get the volunteers, community partners, and housing partners finalized,” says Josie Huang (CGS’23, Questrom’25), an ASB student program manager. 

Now that spring break 2024 is here, Huang and her fellow workers are excited to see the ASB team’s hard work come to fruition. The program managers, chairs, and coordinators will join the rest of the volunteers on site, overseeing the trip on the ground.

“They’re on the front lines,” says Liam Henson (CGS’22, CAS’24), another ASB program manager, referring to the student chairs and coordinators. “They’re dealing with the people on site on the trip, and they do a lot of conflict management and recognition.”

Victoria Witkowski (CAS’25), the ASB social justice and education chair, was in charge of researching the locations and their histories, demographics, and cultures. “Hopefully, every year [the program] will get a little more word out there, and people will be more excited about it,” says Witkowski, who says ASB has been the highlight of her college career.

Rafaele DiMaggio (Questrom’25) is leading his second trip as a program coordinator, this time traveling to North Carolina to oversee volunteers at Terrell Lane Middle School. “I’m looking forward to creating that bond with all the volunteers, like last year,” he says. “We all just came in as complete strangers and became pretty good friends. That kind of bond is something you don’t get all the time.”

While the ASB team looks forward to increasing the number of trips— potentially to international locations—Speer, recalling the Hope Sound trees, says the program’s immediate impact is reflected in the revitalized community partnerships.

“In some ways, I’m like, gosh, how much have they grown?” he says. “I look at that, and [I‘m reminded] how much the Community Service Center has grown and how much BU has grown.”