In an effort to increase reflection and service beyond the one week of spring break, the Center for Social Justice’s Alternative Spring Break program expanded pre- and post-trip activities starting this spring.

This endeavor began with an extensive planning process that encouraged thoughtfulness and intentionality.

Stefan Rajiyah (SFS ’14), the head of the ASB Board, said that leaders were encouraged to consider the importance and relevance of each activity they planned.

“Asking ‘Why?’ is one of our core ASB practices, and it ensures leaders are intentional in every aspect of planning their trip by encouraging leaders to ask themselves how each activity planned fits into the mission statements and themes they developed previously,” Rajiyah wrote in an email.

Last summer, trip leaders created mission statements for their trips in order to determine the values around which their trips would focus. As logistical planning began last semester, leaders constructed itineraries that would allow for a holistic introduction to the issues that they would focus on during the trips.

Additionally, ASB’s application expanded this year to include a new, optional section on diversity in which applicants were prompted to explore a part of their identity.

“While we hoped the application would allow applicants to reflect on their own identities, we wanted to make sure leaders felt confident in beginning a dialogue about diversity inclusion while reading applications,” ASB Marketing Chair Kayla Corcoran (COL ’15) wrote in an email.

This year, pre-trip activities were extended to increase participant involvement throughout the year and prepare participants for the issues that they would be working during spring break.

“All of the trips in the program utilized pre-trip activities to not only get their participants excited about the trip, but also to get the conversation started about the issues [and] themes of their trip,” Rajiyah wrote.

Participants in ASB’s Habitat for Humanity trips attended a pre-trip presentation with Habitat for Humanity International and the D.C. Habitat for Humanity affiliate about the organization’s functions and missions. In past years, pre-trip activities for the Habitat for Humanity trips were limited to a potluck dinner for participants.

“I think strengthening the pre- and post-trip activities was important for this dimension of the experience,” ASB Habitat for Humanity Coordinator Whitney Pratt (COL ’14) wrote in an email. “I know that the Habitat presentation allowed our participants to know much more about the organization we were working with and also to ask really important questions.”

For participants in the Spring Break in Appalachia trip, service began before spring break. In addition to attending a presentation given by Appalachian literature professor Patricia O’Connor, participants spent an afternoon volunteering at the Capital Area Food Bank prior to the trip.

“We wanted pre-trip to encourage group bonding and offer analytical points of comparison to issues in D.C. and those in Appalachia,” Rajiyah, who led the trip, wrote.

Some leaders felt that the extended pre-trip activities had a noticeable impact on their group’s experiences during the trips.

“More intentional pre-trip activities helped establish a reflective tone early on, providing a strong base for both leaders and participants to actively engage with their respective social justice issues by asking though-provoking questions,” Corcoran, who led a trip to New Orleans, wrote.

In addition to the new pre-trip activities, the ASB Board will expand post-trip activities in order to encourage participants to continue to focus on social justice.

Within a week after returning, all individual groups engaged in reflections about their trips and their transitions back into life at Georgetown. Participants and leaders from all trips gathered for an ice cream social on Sunday night to share their experiences. Additionally, ASBeyond the Week, a series of post-trip advocacy events that began on March 27, aims to bring together the larger Georgetown community through events like movie screenings, panels, a blood drive and participation in an upcoming march for immigrant reform.

“The ASB program is following a structure for its post-trip events that we hope will give a larger narrative shape to post-trip, which is the story of your trip, the story of ASB and the story of now,” Corcoran wrote.

Ultimately, the goal of these post-trip activities is to encourage participants to stay committed to social justice.

“Post-trip provides an outlet to bring it home … and follows our model of ASB as a springboard of continued engagement with social justice,” Rajiyah wrote.