ASB is a week-long undergraduate service trip during Spring Break to various underserved communities around the Eastern/Southern United States. Groups travel to areas in Kentucky, Mississippi, Maryland, New Orleans, Michigan and new this year, Charleston, WV and the Bronx, NY! In addition to these seven sites, a group will be heading to Puebla, Mexico. Activities performed at all the sites may include interior and exterior home repair, maintenance work, soup kitchen work, tutoring, and other projects in the community determined by the organizations we work with. Through personal interaction with community members, students learn a great deal about the importance of service, their fellow students, and themselves.

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam (“To the Greater Glory of God”): Alternative Means of Discovering Grace.

Our service immersion program offers rising seniors an opportunity to put their faith into action in a very challenging and real way. They are about responding to the Gospel call to serve those in need, while questioning the reasons behind why people are in need. While each immersion has its own unique slant, they all encourage participants to learn about living in solidarity with people and experiencing a different way of living, often without many material possessions.

Currently in its 22nd year, the Arrupe Immersion Program is a faith based program responding to the call to work for peace and justice in the world. This call is central to the Christian Scriptures and to the Jesuit mission of the College of the Holy Cross. 

• The Mexico Program is currently in its 19th year. The program seeks to provide students with and experience of the reality of life in Latin America through the eyes of the poor and in light of the Gospel.

The Jamaica Program seeks to offer Holy Cross students the opportunity to encounter the poor and marginalized of Jamaica through interpersonal dialogue and service, to learn about aspects of Jamaican culture through a series of speakers and to nurture and challenge their faith.

• The Kenya Program is our semester break program. Visit the Chaplains' Office to learn about their experiences and explore possibilities of being part of the next trip.

• Amnesty International
• Music For Others
• Social Justice
• Frosh/Soph Social Justice
• Environmental Club
• Pro-Life Club
• United Students Against Sweatshops
• S.M.A.S.H.

The Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education is dedicated to preserve and extend the Catholic identity and Jesuit mission of Santa Clara University. Competence, conscience, and compassion these critical qualities are built into the foundations of a Santa Clara University education. The Center's work provides students, faculty and staff with opportunities to examine Jesuit and Catholic ideals, promote social justice through community-based learning, and encourage solidarity through immersion.

Bellarmine currently supports a number of different Immersion experiences for students and faculty members. In June of each year, Bellarmine sends a delegation of approximately 10 students and 4 faculty members to El Salvador to spend two weeks with the people there, learning about their lives, and the important connection that the Jesuits have with El Salvador

During the February Winter Break, a group of roughly 10 students travels to Guaymas, Mexico, to work on a variety of projects there, to serve at a soup kitchen, and to partake in a program that works with impoverished youth.

Locally, Bellarmine sponsors both urban and rural "plunges" on a number of weekends throughout the school year. The urban plunge provides students and faculty with the opportunity to grapple with the issues related to homelessness in San Jose. Students meet with a number of different agencies that serve the homeless, and provide service via working at soup kitchens. The rural plunge takes students to Salinas for several days, where they work with and hope better to understand the struggles faced by migrant farm workers.

Campus Ministry has had a tradition of offering students the opportunity to spend time in other countries to learn about the realities, hopes, and struggles of those living in situations of economic, political, or social marginalization.

• Sharing in the lives of those living in poverty through short-term service projects and living experiences
• Reflecting critically on issues of faith and justice
• Being exposed to the wonderful diversity of God's creations through an encounter with those living in a culture different from their own
• Offering their skills, resources and gifts for the purpose of creating a more just and loving world

At the end of their junior year, students are offered the opportunity to participate in one of Prep’s summer immersion trips. In 2008, three separate school-led summer service trips took students and staff to New Orleans, Ivanhoe, Va., and the Dominican Republic, where their hard work and sweat made a difference to these communities as they fulfilled their responsibility to be “Men for Others.”

Each summer six to eight Regis students who are reasonably proficient in Spanish spend a month at the Working Boys’ Center in Quito, Ecuador. The Center was founded by Father John Halligan, S.J. to help street children and has now become a holistic family development center with a clinic and school attached. The Regis students work side by side with the Center’s full time volunteers tutoring, supervising recreation, and accompanying the Center’s clients at meals and mass.

This program is being expanded to include Haiti and possibly other locations.

Named for its founder, a 1986 law school graduate, the Holocaust/Human Rights Project helps to ensure that the precedential value of Holocaust-related law is fully realized and applied to state-sponsored human rights violations today. The project also organizes major conferences to address specific legal issues related to the Holocaust and other human rights violations, such as the annual Kupferschmid lecture.

Immersion trips aim to introduce students to new cultures, allowing them to assimilate unfamiliar perspectives into their own worldview with the intention of creating more globally minded citizens. These trips do not necessarily incorporate homestays, but they do allow for cultural experiences and plenty of time for getting to know the locals.

Direct service trips focus on placing students in a position to directly aid communities through hands-on experiences (ie trail maintenance, basic construction, teaching English, childcare, etc). While there is usually some time built in for education and getting to know the culture, the main goal of these trips is to directly be in service to others.

Issue specific trips are theme based, aimed at educating students about particular socioeconomic and environmental issues that affect our world. In Juarez, for example, students learn about the myriad of issues that are contributing to the recent femicide. There is usually some related direct service and cultural experiences that are built in to these trips.

*While trips usually contain all three of these components in some respect, we have categorized trips in order to highlight the main focus of each Alternative Break.

Students joining Loyola Volunteers agree serve two hours per week for a semester at a local nonprofit agency or work on various projects during the semester for a minimum of 30 hours. There is an application process that includes participation in a monthly reflection group and attending one Community Service retreat each year.

The Marquette Action Program (M.A.P.) offers the chance to work and interact with people all over the United States. Different sites offer students an opportunity to live and learn from people of different backgrounds. The trips expose you to aspects of poverty, racism and the lives of the disabled in our society.

M.A.P. trips are worthwhile for many reasons: you contribute to the community in which you work, are exposed to different social, cultural and economic situations in our society, grow in awareness of justice issues, learn how service organizations work to make a difference, meet and interact with new people, and have time to reflect upon how the experience relates to you personally and your faith.

University of Scranton students are eligible to participate in Marywood University's two-week service program during May or January working and living with the poor. The mission of the program responds to the message of the gospels to aid the poor, homeless and lonely. Student's travel to South America and participate in the following: aiding educational medical programs, building homes, and sharing faith with daily liturgy and prayer. The participants will live with and experience the Hispanic culture and people; hopefully gaining a richer understanding of their culture, faith, lives and hearts.

For many years St. Rita of Cascia Catholic Church has been supporting and communicating with the missions of Kasisi in Africa, St. Catherine's in Alaska, and the Swinomish Spirituality Center in LaConner, Wa.
Not simply an exchange of letters, this helps the community realize the values associated with being a Jesuit parish, such as a real concern for the well being of others and a spirituality that moves St. Rita's forward.

Rhodes University: Semester or full-year program in Grahamstown for students across the disciplines. Excellent opportunities for service learning. Grahamstown offers excellent supervised community service opportunities. Under the dedicated leadership of BC’s on-site coordinator, Prof. Geoffrey Antrobus, students participate in customized service placements in local hospitals, shelters, day care centers, schools, soup kitchens, senior centers, and AIDS education projects.
 

This course addresses the comparative and international politics of the Gulf States, with emphasis on Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. It analyzes state formation, state-society relations, democratization, the rise of Islamism and regime stability, foreign policies, regional politics, and the politics of OPEC and international oil markets.  It also assesses the effects of oil on domestic politics and foreign policy, including the trade-offs of wealth for regional power and political continuity. Finally, it highlights pressures for political liberalization and growth in civil society. Students will visit sites of political, religious, and historical significance throughout Kuwait and the Gulf, attend presentations at the National Assembly and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and take part in joint sessions with English-speaking Kuwaiti students of the same age. 
 

Semester or full-year program in Ifrane at a small, prestigious institution with an English-language curriculum. Courses in business, management, the humanities, including Islamic Studies, Arabic language, and across the disciplines. Opportunities for service and volunteer work. Multilingual environment.