Spring Breaks Projects - community service projects funded by the Swearer Center that used to consist solely of flying to an area and volunteering for a week - are becoming seminar-style workshops on community issues in the real world, said Rabbi Alan Flam P'05, a senior fellow at the Swearer Center and associate University chaplain.
Over the past four and a half years, the Swearer Center has been in the process of changing the nature of spring Breaks Projects to better align them with the mission of the center, Flam said.
Past projects organized small groups of students to volunteer with a variety of organizations across the country, he said. Students had a range of community work and locations from which to choose. Some went to South Carolina to provide hurricane relief, and others went to Arizona to volunteer in hospitals, he said. There was little or no intellectual component to these trips, he said.
Now, spring Breaks Projects only take place in Rhode Island to take advantage of local Swearer Center connections, Flam said. "Moving the projects to Providence and Rhode Island seemed more in line with the Swearer Center mission to establish a connection between the Brown community and the local community," he said.
The Swearer Center has also added an intellectual focus to make the projects more meaningful, Flam said. Students now volunteer work in a variety of local organizations and meet with local nonprofit organization leaders and community activists.
The projects' new goal is to investigate specific issues in the community based on a chosen theme, Flam said. Past projects constructed along these lines have investigated issues from immigration to affordable housing to food security. "We hope that these projects will have a better chance to impact lifelong learning if they have an intellectual component," he said.
This year the Brown Christian Fellowship has undertaken a project in the new format centered on the theme of poverty and social justice, said Greg Johnson, an adviser for the Chaplains' Office. Its participants' mission is to connect with the local community and develop a better understanding of social justice and poverty in Providence, he explained.
The 10 participants plan to spend a week living in a Providence church. They will volunteer at a variety of local organizations dealing with poverty and reconvene at night to read related articles and share their daily experiences with one another. A representative from the Poverty Institute at Rhode Island College and the director of the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence in Providence have also been invited to speak.
Project leaders hope the combination of community work and discussion will help students develop their own moral structure to deal with local poverty, which they may not have been aware of before the project, Johnson said. "We are trying to enter into a different world for a week to see how it can affect (our) own lives," he said.
BCF hopes the project will open students' eyes to the reality of Providence, said Laura Leis '07, student coordinator of the project and Herald photographer.
"It's really important for any person, not just members of BCF, to put their moral ideals into practice," Leis said. "It should become a part of your lifestyle, not just your beliefs."
The project has a clear goal, but organizers aren't exactly sure what conclusion it will reach, according to Brandon Gill '05, a student coordinator and BCF member. He stressed the open-minded nature of the project and encouraged students not affiliated with BCF to participate. "We are so pleased with this project and are excited to see how others apply faith in practice," he said.
