TERRE HAUTE — As college students around the nation head out for some Spring Break fun in the sun, more than 60 of them will head to Terre Haute.
About a dozen of them arrived Thursday while the rest will come Saturday as part of the United Way Alternative Spring Break. The students will help tear down houses, rebuild interiors of the homes damaged by last June’s floods and help organize and clean the Wabash Valley Long Term Disaster Recovery coalition offices and warehouse.
Students come from such states as Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Texas and California. Some will stay in dorms at Indiana State University while others will stay in the new downtown Candlewood Suites hotel.
Though it was Keshia Desir’s first time in Indiana, she’s not new to the Alternative Spring Break program. She spent her past two spring breaks from Brooklyn College City University of New York in Louisiana helping rebuild after Hurricane Katrina, she said.
It started when her best friend persuaded her to go; she enjoyed it so much that she went back the next year, she said. She also didn’t feel her work was done.
This year, Desir, a junior psychology major, wanted to go to a different place for a change of pace and to meet new people, she said.
“I think it’s fun, besides the work,” she said. “What was great the first year, we helped this lovely lady with two kids and we rebuilt her house.”
She spent her second year cutting down and replanting trees, which was a very new experience for a city girl, said Desir, 20, of Brooklyn.
“By the end of the week, I was cutting down trees, touching frogs, snakes, I was just all into it,” she said. “I was all into the whole nature thing, so I gave it a chance and I really enjoyed it.”
Having done only Alternative Spring Breaks, Desir said she doesn’t miss out on the stereotypical spring break.
“I’m not even into that kind of stuff. I don’t like meeting random people at parties because it’s creepy,” she said. “And here, being that you’re with other people who have the same goal as you, you have a sense of trust of people because they have that same focus, that same want to help other people, so why wouldn’t we want to be there and want to help you?”
Desir said she was surprised to be sent to Indiana because she hadn’t heard anything about the floods.
Like Desir, 23-year-old Peggy Chasler of Washington D.C. also hadn’t heard about the floods. This is her first year working with United Way of America.
“I hear that everyone in this community is really warm, I’m really interested to hear people’s stories whose homes were damaged during the flood,” she said.
When local United Way workers had visited the United Way of America, Chasler said she was shocked to not have known about the flood after hearing their stories.
“I’m excited to get out there and really start helping to rebuild,” she said.
It’s also Chasler’s first time in Indiana. She said it’s beautiful and “definitely different from the East Coast” as she saw many farms on the drive to Terre Haute from the airport.
Chasler also was involved in volunteering throughout college and high school, she said, which showed her how blessed she is and the importance of helping others, so she’s excited to be on the other side of it by being a leader.
“Young people have a passion and an excitement and a drive to help others and a lot of times they just don’t know where to turn and where the resources are to use those passions,” she said. “And we see that building a relationship with them is a great way to allow them to volunteer as college students and hopefully build something in them where they feel volunteering is really a part of their lives, make an impact on them so they’ll continue to volunteer as adults in the future and work for really good organizations like the United Way that work to make communities a better place.”
United Way of America hosts five Alternative Spring Breaks each year. Generally a couple of locations in the Gulf Coast and a few that are inland with damage from a natural disaster, said Jessie Wozny, Alternative Spring Break coordinator for the United Way of the Wabash Valley. This is the first time the Wabash Valley’s United Way has hosted an Alternative Spring Break.
“We were definitely surprised to hear we were getting 65 students,” Wozny said. “We thought it was very cool.”
Wozny is also new to the Alternative Spring Break program, she said.
“It’s very cool; I’m very excited,” she said. “I just want to see the ability to build relationships that these individuals are going to carry with them for the rest of their lives.”
In addition to gutting and rebuilding, the students also will learn about the impact flooding had on agriculture during a program March 11 at a local farm from other farmers and Eddie Adams of the National Resources Conservation, who is in charge of the waterway projects and levees in Vigo County.
Crystal Garcia can be reached at (812) 231-4271 or crystal.garcia@tribstar.com.
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