Senior Annica Sunner had been looking for a capstone experience for her four years at Tufts. Last week she found one, when she and several friends signed up to build houses for people displaced by Hurricane Katrina.
Sunner is taking part in the Volunteer Vacations program run by the Leonard Carmichael Society (LCS).
LCS runs the program every winter break, usually to different places around the country to do various service projects. This year, though, all Volunteer Vacations trips will be combined into one large trip to Jackson, Miss.
About 100 Tufts students are signed up to go on the week-long trip, scheduled for Jan. 11-18. Upon arrival, they will be broken into groups of ten to perform volunteer services such as helping to rebuild homes destroyed by the hurricane.
The trip's coordinators, seniors Rachel Rosen, Alex Kramer and Barbara Magid, have been hard at work planning the trip. Once the decision was made to focus solely on the Gulf Coast, the coordinators began looking for community services organizations with which to collaborate.
Through the Web site Craig's List, the coordinators identified an organization called HANDS, based in Jackson, which will oversee the details and plan all of the aspects of the service work once the students arrive.
"At first we were kind of lost about what big service organization to go to because they were all overloaded," Rosen said. "[But everything] all came together because of luck over the course of a few days."
Paired with HANDS, LCS's only responsibilities are to coordinate transportation to and from Jackson and organize the week's food.
The coordinators announced the trip at the LCS general interest meeting the first week of school, posted an announcement on Tuftslife.com and made several announcements in their classes. Most of the publicity, though, was through word of mouth.
"It was kind of amazing that way," Rosen said. "In past years we have had to beg for people to go on these trips. But we had 100 to 200 people e-mail us asking to go."
The trip has been planned in conjunction with the University College of Citizenship and Public Service (UCCPS) and some consultation with faculty members.
UCCPS Student Program Specialist Gary Van Deurse stressed that the trip was student-initiated. "My role was to sit down and talk to [the student coordinators] about what a trip like this would look like," he said. "We want to respond to both the affected communities' needs as well as student interest ... our involvement has been in response to student initiative."
The organizers wanted to include faculty members in the trip, but none were interested in going to Jackson. Some faculty members, though, offered to provide students financial aid to go on the trip.
The trip will be subsidized by the University and LCS. Some financial aid will be available. Unless students provide their own transportation, the trip will cost $150.
Many of the details of the trip are still in the works, including sleeping arrangements and how the food will be transported. The student volunteers will either sleep in tents or in some sort of hospitality arranged by local churches.
The coordinators are also in the midst of writing letters to local supermarkets to solicit food donations for the trip. "We're going to have to bring down lots and lots of suitcases of food," Rosen said.
Some student participants raised safety concerns with the trip, such as possible injuries from the house construction. Van Deurse said the coordinators discussed the safety issues.
Because the trip is run through Tufts, Rosen said, the University is liable for any injuries.
Sunner said she was looking forward to the trip. "I'm excited to see what conditions we are going to live in as volunteers," she said. "The conditions will be different than what we're used to at Tufts but that's part of the experience."
Rosen was also optimistic. "I shouldn't say that it is a success yet, but it seems like it's going to be," she said. "We're very excited."
