ANN ARBOR—More than 300 students, representatives from 34 non-profit and community organizations, and campus alternative break program coordinators from 63 campuses across the country will gather here this weekend for the fourth annual Break Away national conference. The organization promotes service through break-oriented programs which immerse students in community projects.

Coordinator Sanjay Patel, a 1997 University of Michigan graduate, is leading a team of more than 50 U-M volunteers working on “Connecting Campuses and Communities,” which opens Friday (Nov. 7) with an Into the Streets service project at 13 sites in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. More than 100 conference participants have pre-registered for the volunteer effort.

Patel says U-M was selected to host the conference because of its leadership role in alternative break programs, which place teams of students in communities to engage in community service and experiential learning during their summer, fall, winter or spring breaks, and on weekends. Students perform short-term projects for community agencies and learn about problems such as literacy, poverty, racism, hunger, homelessness, and the environment, with which they otherwise may have had little or no direct contact.

“We are the largest program in the country by about 15 sites, and we have a nationally recognized, well-developed alternative break program,” says Patel. More than 400 U-M students will choose among 40 sites for this year’s Alternative Spring Break (ASB) program in 18 states and Mexico. ASB is run by students through the Project SERVE office, a unit of the Center for Learning through Community Service, directed by U-M social work Prof. Barry Checkoway.

This is the first time that the national conference has been moved from Vanderbilt University, where Break Away was conceived by two Vanderbilt students. U-M was one of 11 universities to form chapters in 1991 when Break Away was founded. Grand Valley State, Wayne State and Eastern Michigan universities also have Break Away chapters, as does Bay de Noc Community College in the Upper Peninsula.

“From the beginning, we have worked very closely with the Break Away staff on improving and expanding the alternative break movement across the country,” says Patel. Campus adviser David Waterhouse serves on Break Away’s national board and co-directs Project SERVE with Anita Bohn.

Throughout the three-day conference, participants will participate in workshops designed to enhance their leadership skills and networking. Six tracks will focus on site leader training, developing a program, strengthening existing programs, including curriculum-based alternative breaks, and site-specific issues. A series of workshops on community perspectives allows community-based organizations to discuss common challenges, including how to effectively schedule work-site activities and the more mundane issues of housing and feeding large groups of students.

One of the real benefits of bringing students together from across the country is to network, and to realize that the wheel doesn’t have to be reinvented, says Patel, a veteran of three alternative break programs during his undergraduate years, including work with a Native American tribe in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., and Haitian refugees in Miami.

In addition to his conference duties, the Rochester, N.Y., native is co-coordinator of site leader education and training for U-M’s ASB and a volunteer at a women’s Alcoholics Anonymous class playing with children. He also has worked with AmeriCorps through Latino Family Services in Detroit, and “is passionate about youth and refugee issues.”

Conference participants will hear talks by Goodwin Liu, former program officer at the Corporation for National Service, where he directed a $12.5 million federal initiative supporting community service programs. Articles by Liu have appeared in the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning. Mayor Elizabeth McKee of Damascus, Va., a community that earned Break Away’s 1996 Host Agency of the Year award, also will speak.

For more information or a schedule, contact Patel via e-mail at [email protected] or call (313) 936-2437.

AmeriCorpsCorporation for National ServiceU-M News and Information ServicesUniversity of Michigan