During Spring Break 2013, Camille Allamel ’15 and seven fellow members of Columbia Students for Human Rights traveled to Isle de Jean Charles, an island in southern Louisiana where a fast-receding coastline threatens the stability of the resident Biloxi-Chitimacha tribe. In an effort to assist the Tribal Council in its search for new land, Allamel and her colleagues conducted surveys to determine the community’s criteria for relocation.
Meghna Mukherjee '15 and other students conducted a workshop at a local high school during an ABP-funded trip to Siliguri in West Bengal, India. Photo: Courtesy of Meghna Mukherjee ’15
“It was the first time I had to create something from basically nothing and make sure that everyone in the group felt included and that they could work together,” says Allamel, whose project was one of 13 civic engagement projects that received funding from Student Engagement’s Alternative Break Program (ABP) during the 2012–2013 academic year.
Open to students in the University’s four undergraduate schools, ABP does not lead service projects of its own, like many travel community service programs, but instead provides matching grants of up to $5,000 for student-designed initiatives. Grants can be applied to food, lodging, transportation and other travel expenses. ABP awarded $30,000 in grants for projects implemented during the 2012–2013 spring and summer breaks, according to Associate Director of Student Engagement Peter Cerneka. Projects ran the gamut from college preparatory workshops for low-income high school students in Fort Worth, Texas, to an HIV-AIDS awareness campaign in Uganda.
Students who seek funding from ABP submit proposals in which they outline the goals of their civic engagement project and strategies for achieving them. ABP asks that applicants conceptualize their projects using a set of tools that Student Engagement calls the “5 Pathways to Service”: direct service, activism, political participation, financial stewardship and engaged scholarship. “What we ask students to do when they come up with their civic engagement idea is to look at it through the lens of the five pathways and have an understanding of which tool they need to use and how it will help the community,” Cerneka says.
Proposals are reviewed by the ABP Student Advisory Board, which consists of six students with service experience who make recommendations to Student Engagement regarding acceptance decisions and funding. In addition to financial support, ABP prepares trip leaders through workshops on such topics as recruiting a team, working with sponsor organizations and fundraising.
“The students have to think through every step,” Cerneka notes. “Where is the money going to come from? Who is going to do this or that? How do we get there? These are basic questions, but they are very important in terms of what it means to get your hands dirty in the community. The work is important in the moment but it is also important because these students are going to be community leaders and members for the rest of their lives.”
Photo: Courtesy of Meghna Mukherjee ’15
In May 2013, Meghna Mukherjee ’15 and Chloe Durkin ’15 led six other students, most of them members of the student group Columbia Child Rights, to the town of Siliguri in West Bengal, India, where they offered English and health workshops through a local nonprofit. During their two-week stay, the group established a volunteer system to enable the organization to continue the workshops on its own. Mukherjee, who was born in Siliguri, notes that involving ABP “enhanced our view of what a service project is. It’s definitely not a top-down system; the most successful projects really do involve the community.”
The challenge of putting together the ABP proposal, says Mukherjee, proved to be the ideal groundwork for their project. “When it came time to actually doing the work, we were extremely prepared,” she says.
Such was the vision of ABP’s founders, Alicia Ciocca ’13 and Melissa Peterson ’13, who proposed a service program to Cerneka as sophomores, worked with Student Engagement to develop ABP and were co-chairs of the Student Advisory Board until they graduated. “We really wanted to redefine how service is structured and we wanted to do that by having an inquiry-based model,” Ciocca says. “So students are coming up with these questions about why something is the way it is, how they can change it and how they can do it in the most sustainable way.”
— Nathalie Alonso ’08