Spend Spring Break Doing Service

With Spring Break just around the corner, talk of all different kinds and vacations and activities are fluttering throughout the Quinnipiac University campus.  Some students are preparing to jet off into the hot Caribbean sun, while others are heading back to work in their hometowns.  Instead of packing up bathing suits and flip-flops, or putting on a department store nametag, Tory Saba is gearing up for an 18-hour car ride to another state.  Why? To build houses. 
 

Saba is the Build Coordinator for Quinnipiac University’s Habitat for Humanity.  Every fall, members of the organization are chosen to attend the Alternative Spring Break trip for the upcoming Spring.  The selected group of students will travel to an impoverished city within the United States and work on building houses and improving the living conditions of a specific area of the city.  This year, two trips have been planned to Alabama and Michigan. 
 
Saba has a great amount of experience with these trips, seeing as it is her fourth one.  This March, Tory will be traveling to Alabama along with 17 other Quinnipiac students and two trip advisors.  However, this year, Saba’s role has drastically changed.  She has gone from a volunteer to the Build Coordinator, working as the bridge between the volunteers and the trip advisors.  Jen Walts, one of the Alabama trip advisors, worked with Saba on the Pittsburgh trip in 2010, and has watched her grow from a volunteer to a leader.
 
“This year, Tory has established herself as the student leader quite well.  Participants on the trip will look to her for advice and moral support.  She has various roles she needs to fulfill, which requires a lot more time and commitment than non-student leaders,” Walts said.
 
While in Phenix City, Ala., Saba and 100 other Habitat for Humanity volunteers from various colleges will be working on four houses for eight hours a day.  According to city-data.com, poverty is blatant in Phenix City.  Records from 2009 show that 23.1 percent of houses in the city have an income below the poverty level.  Most families in Phenix City are broken, and 78.8 percent of females are poor single mothers with no husband present.  These statistics explain how right here in America, help is greatly needed. 

After returning from her trip to Massachusetts her freshman year, Saba immediately made an impact on her fellow Quinnipiac Students.  Chloe St. Rose, also a junior at Quinnipiac, was inspired by Saba’s stories.
 
“Tory was 100 percent my reason for applying in 2010.  I was really nervous about applying and seeing Tory follow her passion for Habitat was my inspiration.  She shared all of her wonderful experiences with me and it only made me more excited and want to get more involved,” St. Rose said.
 
With poverty on the rise, Saba took time to realize how much of an impact the volunteer trip truly makes not only on the Alabama community, but on the volunteers as well.  When asked how these yearly Alternative Spring Break trips impact her own life, Saba said:
 
“I’m so different when I come back from ASB.  Sometimes, I go right back to my materialistic life and I find myself caring about things that don’t matter. But doing these trips makes me realize what’s important in life. I get brought back down to Earth. My outlook on people definitely changes as well.  Everybody may be different, but we’re all equal.”

Photo Credit:
Megan Scully
www.habitat.org