Rice springs into service over break

CONTACT: Jessica Stark
PHONE: 713-348-6777
E-MAIL: stark@rice.edu

Rice springs into service over break
More than 125 Rice students take an alternative spring break

More than 125 Rice University students leave this weekend for nine Alternative Spring Break (ASB) service trips sponsored by the university’s Community Involvement Center.

The Rice students will perform short-term projects in partnership with community agencies and learn about issues such as literacy, poverty, racism, hunger, homelessness and the environment at sites ranging from Costa Rica to Sedro-Woolley, Wash., to Lorton, Va.

About 30 students and four faculty and staff members will be in hurricane-ravaged Galveston Feb. 28 through March 4 to spend about eight hours a day disassembling and clearing away rotten and broken housing materials, disinfecting mold damage and reconstructing houses. Rice’s Community Involvement Center and the Baptist Student Ministry planned the trip.

The Rice group will be working with Good News Galveston (GNG), which calls itself “a collaboration of faith-based organizations and churches cooperating together in the hope, healing and rebuilding of lives in Galveston.” From its adopted headquarters at Alamo Elementary School, GNG helps coordinate, house and feed volunteers from various organizations — with or without religious affiliations — committed to aiding Galveston residents whose homes were damaged or destroyed in Hurricane Ike.

The ASB program aims to involve college students in community-based service projects and give them opportunities to learn about the problems faced by members of communities with whom they otherwise may have had little or no direct contact.