When 4th year student Rachel Tam traveled to Uaxuctún,Guatemala for Alternative Spring Break in February, she was prepared to offer environmental advice and assistance. She was part of a team of 16 students from Carleton University who arrived in the tiny village to construct waste recycling units and teach the local children about environmental sustainability.
Tam, who majors in political science and history, says she quickly realized that they, as North Americans, had something to learn. Uaxuctún is in a jungle where villagers serve as caretakers for nearby Mayan ruins.
“They have no infrastructure to deal with garbage, so they find creative ways to re-use things made of plastic and metal,” said Tam, who helped the village build recycling units. “The idea of leaving it at the curb was inconceivable to them. We had so much to learn from them about living sustainably.”
Tam’s trip to Guatemala was one of six Alternative Spring Break opportunities offered by Carleton’s Student Experience Office. The others included volunteer work in Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, New Orleans, and Banff, Alberta.
At a recent presentation, the students universally described their experiences as amazing and life-altering, with many planning to participate next year.
Fourth-year Social Work student Elyse La Salle traveled with a group to El Chile, Nicaragua to construct a classroom for the local school. She described the trip as “eye-opening”.
“It was an agricultural community with no running water, no cars, and very few tools to work on the school,” said La Salle. “It underscores how little support they receive from the government for education.”
La Salle says her week in Nicaragua influenced her career plans. “I had never considered working in the North, but now I am looking into community development projects there. It’s an exciting possibility.”
One of the more challenging aspects of the Alternative Spring Break experience is that the students need to find a way to pay for the trip themselves. “The students, together with the ASB staff, have really reached out to the Carleton Community and their own networks to help fund this experience” said Associate Dean (Student Success), Betina Kuzmarov, “and we want to be able to help them. To do this we’ll need your support.”
To assist with this, and other international learning experiences, the Faculty of Public Affairs has started a crowdfunding campaign, called the International Experience Fund.
To learn more, visit: futurefunder.carleton.ca/projects/support-the-fpa-international-experience-fund/
