This year Break Away celebrated its twentieth anniversary. Founded at Vanderbilt University, Break Away: the Alternative Break Connection, Inc. is a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that supports the development of quality alternative break programs. Break Away provides training and information primarily to colleges, universities, and nonprofit organizations interested in creating lifelong active citizens through these intensive service-learning programs.
Thank you for support and for all you’ve invested in the inspiring organizations like Campus Kitchen and Sharpe that are truly responsible for me standing up here.
A countless number of William and Mary students have given their weekends and breaks volunteering in the community of Petersburg, Virginia throughout their time at the College. The Office of Community Engagement and Scholarship’s tradition continued over Martin Luther King weekend, the first trip to Petersburg of 2012. However, during this visit, the students received an inspirational experience in return.
There once was a town inside of a bubble Where the sun never shown and the skies were so gray. Though many people lived inside, There was no way to get away.
“How much should poor school performance be blamed on family life, parenting, and life outside of school, rather than the schools themselves? Should parents be penalized when their child is truant? Are there family life situations that just cannot be overcome in school?”
David Smith, with an easy smile and plenty of jokes, serves as an ideal role model for Leadership in Community Engagement students due to his impressive résumé at such a young age.
As the old saying goes, history often repeats itself. If that is true for the American public education system, then its future is certainly predictable. For example, test scores have followed a specific pattern since the 1980s.
Every once and awhile someone comes along who shakes things up, puts a new perspective on worn out topics and encourages people to think in a new way.
A student’s learning habits are unique aspects to education that cannot be designed to suit everyone’s needs.
George Srour is hope for any senior or junior without a job, but with an idea. George came up with the thought for Building Tomorrow while an undergraduate here at William & Mary in the midst of being a typically over-worked, over-involved student.
Think being a student is tough? Or believe the possibility of being a "real" adult is daunting? Try being an Associate at a top Washington D.C. law firm and the Chairman of a multi-national non-profit, Global Playground. Doug Bunch is William & Mary through and through.
He came. He spoke. He inspired. Robert Egger, the founder and executive director of DC Central Kitchen, came to William and Mary this past week to share his thoughts on leadership while encouraging William and Mary students to get up and move!
See what members of Destination China did in communities with migrant workers' children this summer!
I wanted to address universal issues like affordable housing, poverty, and education on a personal level, relevant to my geographic area. But as I meticulously followed this four year plan, some questions and curiosities surfaced.
When I first signed up Leadership in DC Nonprofits with the Community Engagement Institute I imagined that it would be an in depth look at the non-profit sector, analyzing it’s development over time, the different administrative approaches that compliment different organizations and the way to be the most effective leader in the nonprofit world utilizing tools to see your vision come to fruition.
A thank-you letter written to supporters of the SPIMA alternative break to Ghana in March 2011.
Visit Stefanie Muldrow's blog about Students Helping Honduras' spring alternative break
Excerpts from a journal from a member of Global Village Project 2011, a Branch Out international alternative break
Follow the journey of a member of Global Village Project on her trip in March 2011
Reflections on a winter break project in New Orleans
There was something wonderfully metaphorical about creating a thing of remarkable beauty from the most unremarkable and “unbeautiful” of objects and watching that creation function at a level higher than anyone would have imagined.
Reflections on a winter break internship with teh Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute
Reflections on service over winter break
Reflections on an internship with the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh over winter break
Excerpts from a travel journal during the William and Mary Medical Relief alternative break to Nicaragua
Maybe we don’t give children enough credit transforming an arguably fractured education system into something that is among the most rewarding of all professions. With all that the system has done to stack the deck against the love of profession, people still teach. Thanks be to the children that remind us why we teach.
I recently read an editorial in the Virginia Informer, in which the author questioned the words "community engagement." The author proposed that these words were merely trigger words-words that offer excitement without meaning. I know from my own experiences and from talking with my peers what it is to truly be an engaged citizen, but the editorial made me stop and question the differences between the terms service and engagement.
To get through the hardest journey we need only to take one step at a time but we must keep stepping. --Chinese Proverb
(with credit to Pearl Jam) Bailey Thomson writes about her experience of moving more deeply into community engagement throughout her life.
Over the past four years, I've had some of the most amazing opportunities to give back to communities both domestic and abroad. Before I came to William and Mary, I never even thought that I would come this far, in terms of my relationship to service and engaged scholarship. Back in middle school, we were required to volunteer a certain number of hours per month. Now although this idea of service was on a very miniscule level, this small seed grew into a greater love for service that I have today. I love the fact that I have the capacity to develop a relationship with another human seeded by love and justice.
Growing up, community service was an integral part of my life. Being in Girls Scouts, helping out at church, and general volunteer work were all acceptable forms of service. My peers never questioned the process: attend a site, doing the assigned work, and feel good upon leaving because of a job well done. On the other hand I was left wanting more, wondering how the work we did affected the people we were helping and wanting to meet them and talk to them about their lives...
During the last week of February, OCES launched its Stand Up Campaign. Including a total of 8 events, the Stand Up Campaign began Monday, Feb. 22 with “Take a Stand Day.” Students were asked to stand on modern-day soap boxes and talk about a social justice issue of particular importance do them. Molly Bulman chose hunger. Here speech is included here.
I believe when we wish for a better world, we are implicitly wishing for a more just world - one in which justice and, therefore, peace are things as real as the breaths in our lungs, the blood in our hearts, the butterflies in our stomachs...
I sit here as it snows, hot cocoa at-the-ready, surrounded in steady silence. In this blanketed moment it is easy to look forward without inhibition, to see a wide, beautiful future for myself in which all dreams fall into place as peacefully as these six-fingered flakes.
