WASHINGTON — Some local college students are trading their spring break plans for the opportunity to serve others and help change lives.
“We do service work in different cities,” says Ayanna McFarland, a senior at Howard University and student director of its Alternative Spring Break program. “We bring hope, and hope saves lives.”
The program, which is more than 20 years old, is the reason she ended up attending Howard. This is her fourth year volunteering.
On Saturday morning, more than 500 Howard students went out with bags packed. They will spend a week doing service work at one of eleven sites: Baltimore, Chicago, St. Louis, Memphis, New Orleans, Newark, Washington, D.C., Haiti, Detroit and West Virginia.
McFarland says the West Virginia site is new this year; the volunteers will stay in a facility for incarcerated women. “All of our sites are actually in the top 10 for violent crimes,” she adds. “All of our sites are big cities with high poverty populations.”
The focus, she says, is different for each site. In D.C., the focus is HIV and AIDS. In St. Louis, she says it will be civics education, the act of teaching people their rights and how to advocate for themselves.
“The major issue we all know is gun violence,” McFarland says of the Chicago site. “So we are going there and focusing on getting to the root of what’s happening in urban youth — talking to them and figuring out different ways of solving issues other than going to the gun.”
Mentoring is a top priority for the volunteers. They work with students in urban areas to help them see the value of education.
“Let’s be clear, a lot of these Howard students came from the same background, the same places that we serve,” McFarland concludes. “We are also broken people working alongside broken people to create change. To be able to help them see what they’re able to do in the future.”
