Many Georgetown students participate in Alternative Spring Break (ASB) programs, and travel to places in the United States (some even outside the country!) to help those in need. The following are two testimonials from Carroll Fellows who participated in ASB.
"I thought that, just because the news coverage had stopped months ago, everything had been cleaned up. Hurricane Sandy hit the Northeast at the end of October. We arrived in New York City in late February as part of Georgetown University Hurricane Emergency Relief Efforts (GU HERE), and much of the damage still remained. We spent our days clad in white Tyvek suits, respirators, and goggles to protect ourselves from the mold building up in the houses we were working in. Mold removal is a tedious process that involves scrubbing every visible surface with a special cleaning solution. Spending endless hours working on a house, only to be told that we weren’t anywhere close to finishing, gave me a profound understanding for the sheer amount of work required to rebuild after a disaster like Sandy. It’s work that is likely to continue for years and that is already being forgotten." -- Michael Donnay, COL 2016
"I thought that, just because the news coverage had stopped months ago, everything had been cleaned up. Hurricane Sandy hit the Northeast at the end of October. We arrived in New York City in late February as part of Georgetown University Hurricane Emergency Relief Efforts (GU HERE), and much of the damage still remained. We spent our days clad in white Tyvek suits, respirators, and goggles to protect ourselves from the mold building up in the houses we were working in. Mold removal is a tedious process that involves scrubbing every visible surface with a special cleaning solution. Spending endless hours working on a house, only to be told that we weren’t anywhere close to finishing, gave me a profound understanding for the sheer amount of work required to rebuild after a disaster like Sandy. It’s work that is likely to continue for years and that is already being forgotten." -- Michael Donnay, COL 2016
"As a participant in the Urban Renewal Immersion ASB trip, I had the opportunity to visit Cleveland and Detroit-two cities facing a similar set of economic and social issues. In both cities, my fellow participants and I had the opportunity to immerse ourselves in the communities that we studied by staying in local accommodations and shopping to prepare most of our own meals. Our trip was centered around dialogues with various local leaders, including politicians, religious leaders, leaders in the nonprofit sector, and business owners. Each community member provided us with a unique and valuable perspective from which to view the challenges facing Cleveland and Detroit, perspectives that we carefully considered in frequent reflections throughout the trip. These reflections, along with the tight bonds that my group formed over the course of the week, helped me both to process both my own reactions to the trip and to integrate the insights of other points of view into my perceptions." -- Caleb Weaver, COL 2016Posted by Jeffrey Lin, SFS 2016
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