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Many students spend their Spring Breaks resting from their stressful college lives, but this year hundreds of Pepperdine students will depart with another goal in mind: to serve.
Sponsored by the Pepperdine Volunteer Center, Project Serve will send 270 students to 14 domestic and international locations to perform service and ministry work for varying lengths during the break. Each team and its leader will address a particular concern or injustice prominent in the area to which they travel. Locations include Detroit, Boston, Los Angeles, the Dominican Republic, San Francisco, Appalachia, Washington, D.C., New York City, Las Vegas, Panama, Chicago, Philadelphia and Mexico.
Organized by Project Serve coordinator Andrea Krug and assistant coordinator Meredith Carson, the program aims to give students a deeper purpose in life.
“(It’s) really based on the foundation that meaning in life is not security and material ease but rather in the joy and comfort of relationships and of making the quality of life better for someone else,” Krug said Tuesday in an e-mail interview.
The PVC posted online applications for Project Serve early last semester. The application asked interested students to list their top three site choices and to write a “life mission statement.” Team leaders then interviewed applicants, and the PVC announced the teams at the “Site Revelation” ceremony, complete with a “Mission Impossible” theme, in mid-November. Junior Katherine Whitfield applied to the Boston program because it’s one of her favorite cities in the United States. Upon her acceptance, Whitfield was “thrilled and excited.” Krug estimated that 70 percent of applicants received their first-choice mission.
Team leaders for each of the missions also survived an intensive selection process complete with panel interview. Responsible for scheduling their team’s itinerary, contacting non-profit organizations to work with near their destination, and acting as a liaison between the team and the coordinators, leaders used meeting times to discuss and develop team rules. No written code on inappropriate misconduct for the program exists, but coordinators “expect (the students) to respect the organizations they are working for and being housed by and to uphold the mission of Project Serve,” Krug said.
Junior Mike Sprague, team leader for La Noria, Mexico, will oversee 11 students. “I thought that motivating my team and getting them to commit was going to be a bigger challenge than it was. I am going with an amazing team beside me, and I look forward to their leadership skills coming out as well,” Sprague said, also in an e-mail interview.
To pay for the trips, team members embarked on an extensive canned-goods drive and earned donations for each collected can. Armed with letters and empty grocery bags, students stormed the Lost Hills and Calabasas area asking for non-perishable food items to donate to the homeless for the holiday season. The teams set a new record by collecting six tons of goods for the Ventura County Food Bank.
Many students were also able to fully pay for their own trips after utilizing additional fundraising options, which included creating Mardi Carts to attending TV-show tapings with their teams. Even though airfare costs exceeded initial expectations, Krug estimates that university funding, generous outside donors and a grant from the Lily Grant Endowment enabled Project Serve to raise an additional $18,000. With teams staying at churches and mission organizations, “we have tried to balance our costs very carefully so the trips are as affordable as possible,” Krug said.
Although Project Serve existed years ago as a series of weekend mission trips, the PVC resurrected the program last year to coincide with Pepperdine’s new observance of Spring Break. Four teams traveled to Ground Zero, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and San Felipe, Mexico. Participation this year represents a 170 percent increase, even as two trips were cancelled due to logistical difficulties or lack of student interest, and between 20-30 original participants have withdrawn from their teams for various reasons.
It was Krug’s experience last year at Ground Zero which urged her to apply for the student coordinator position this time around.
“My perspective on meaning and purpose shifted on that trip,” she said.
“I returned to Pepperdine more passionate than ever about service.”
Next week she will travel to Washington, D.C. with her team and work to combat homelessness and social injustice in the nation’s capital. Although she initially found it difficult to narrow the number of possible sites for the program, she later found that she didn’t have to.
“The vision to have over 200 students go seemed huge at the time, but as applications flooded in, the number quickly became reality,” Krug said.
Sprague also chose to continue his association with Project Serve because of a life-changing experience at Ground Zero.
“I hope that my team learns about themselves,” he said. “I hope they come home with a desire to be socially responsible, and I hope that they see the role that God plays in all that. So I guess you can say that my biggest goal is impact and empowerment, whether those things happen to us or within the people that we are serving.”
Teams will participate in an official “send-off” ceremony at Alumni Park this Thursday evening, but Whitfield is slightly concerned her program might be canceled at the last minute.
“The weather in Boston is an issue at this point,” she said.
Whitfield says she will be disappointed if her mission is cancelled because she has been looking forward to serving since October, but as of now, all Project Serve missions for next week are still a “go.”
Submitted February 20, 2003
MALIBU, CA
