Through Fall Alternative Break programs offered by the Kernodle Center for Service Learning and Community Engagement, students headed to both ends of the state of North Carolina to serve communities in need during Fall Break.
Each year the Kernodle Center for Service Learning and Community Engagement connects students to new and surrounding communities to work and address domestic and global social issues through its Fall Alternative Break program. During Fall Break 2019, students traveled both east and west in North Carolina — to Asheville to address the issue of food insecurity and to Wilmington to aid in Hurricane Florence disaster relief.
Junior Kaitlynn Dixon ’21 helped coordinate the Alternative Breaks program in Asheville. This year’s program worked with two organizations including small nonprofit produce farm Root Cause Farm, which donates produce in order to alleviate hunger in the area, and Bounty & Soul, which rescues food from grocery stores that would be discarded based off of aesthetic value or “sell by” dates.
Dixon said her experience this year offers a full-circle perspective, considering she got to see where her harvested items were grown, donated to and received.
“Most places you volunteer with you’ll get to engage in what you’re working with in that moment,” Dixon said. “But you rarely get to see the before and after effects of that organization which made my program’s experience pretty special.”
Dixon says that overall her experience in Ashville was eye-opening as she got to see firsthand the unequal spread of food and access to basic human needs.
“Many of the participants expressed that after this program they’re now very aware of the food they’re eating and the food waste they’re contributing to,” Dixon said. “Wanting to actually make a change in this system here in Alamance County and at home which is super rewarding as a coordinator.”
Another coordinator, senior Chloe Hultman ’20, helped organize the trip to Wilmington in support of relief from Hurricane Florence in 2018. This was Hultman’s first time participating in an alternative break, but she has helped plan them in the past with Elon Volunteers!
“The fact of the matter is that there are communities that are still dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Florence over a year later,” Hultman said. “It is important to do this service work because these people need to be seen, heard, and helped. I know I would want that if I was in their shoes.”
Hultman said marginalized and low socioeconomic communities are still feeling the effects of Hurricane Florence, but they are generating little attention from the public and the media. Hultman worked closely with Junior Talia Gallo ’21, who echoes this sentiment.
“I think it’s important that we pay attention to things like this that lose media coverage even when they are still an issue,” Gallo said. “It highlights how there is so much inequity in our society and we don’t realize it because it may not affect us directly in our day to day lives.”
Hultman and Gallo recently spoke with local FOX affiliate WGHP about the experience. View that report here.
For more information about Alternative Breaks or how to get involved, visit the website here.