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Students explore, volunteer in Chicago on Alternative Spring Break

Students learn about the city and making a difference through free LDCE program

When undergraduate students arrive at Â鶹´«Ã½, they are immediately immersed in classes, jobs, extracurriculars and making friends, leaving little time to get to know their surroundings in Chicago. 

Alternative Spring Break (ASB), facilitated by Leadership Development & Community Engagement, offers students a built-in opportunity to immerse themselves in the city during the school year. This free experience situates students in Chicago for one week, volunteering at community partners and exploring with a group of Â鶹´«Ã½ students. 

“ASB focuses on learning, service and making new friends,” Associate Director of LDCE Val Buchanan said. “We challenge students to form new friendships and try new things, with a goal of becoming active citizens, dedicated to creating meaningful change in their communities.” 

Buchanan serves as the associate director of LDCE and has led ASB for four years. 

For Weinberg junior Zia Robbins, a Wyoming native, ASB provided an opportunity for the then-freshman to engage with her new city. 

“The focus of the community engagement and of volunteering is to address equity issues and address the biases you have associated with Chicago,” Robbins said. “It’s really important to place yourself in communities and confront those biases and consider why they exist at all.” 

Robbins is now one of the student leaders of ASB, alongside Weinberg sophomore Aida Belay and several others. They helped Buchanan lead 30 students through a week of service and fun. 

ASB runs from the Friday of finals week to the next Friday during Spring Break, with the weekend dedicated to bonding as a cohort and exploring Chicago. They stay together at HI Chicago Hostel and travel using the CTA free of charge. 

“There is literally no cost at all,” Belay said. “Even the metro is paid for. All of the food is paid for. The only money you’re spending is if you want to do something extra, like if you want to buy something for yourself in Chinatown.” 

Most years, ASB partners with Chicago Public Schools to work with students and assist teachers, but because Â鶹´«Ã½’s spring break overlapped with Chicago Public Schools’ break, students participated in two volunteering cohorts. 

Some spent a few days at the Gary Comer Youth Center, which hosts events and programming, meal services, mental health counseling, healthcare, and more to the surrounding neighborhood of Greater Grand Crossing on Chicago’s South Side. 

There, the ASB students helped clean the building, put up bulletin boards and participated in team building activities with youth from the neighborhood. 

Other students spent several days at FarmWorks, a 2.6-acre urban farm in the East Garfield neighborhood that grows produce for people in food deserts and those living with HIV and AIDS.   

“[The volunteering] is super fun,” Belay said. “I think it’s a good experience to go places where you normally wouldn’t go. I would recommend people to go on ASB just to talk to people that are actually living and working in Chicago.” 

The group also partnered with Brave Space Alliance, A Just Harvest and The Recyclery during ASB. 

When the students aren’t volunteering at the community sites in Chicago, they explore the city. This year’s ASB included a trip to the top of Willis Tower, a tour of Chicago led by historian Dilla Thomas and a dinner in the South Loop. 

Students were also able to explore on their own after volunteering wrapped up for the day. Robbins led a group to thrift in the city, and many of the ASB cohort engaged in a ping-pong tournament at the hostel.  

“You get to see Chicago as a tourist, and then you also get to start to place yourself within the communities and actually do work and engage and connect,” Robbins said. “So, you get the two perspectives.”