Alternative Spring Break – Engage Dallas

Spring Engage Dallas Alternative Break Trip

Written by Engage Dallas Area Coordinator Hannah Green

Over this past Spring Break I, along with our staff advisor (Dani Palomo), and three other students (Julian Seghers 26’, Margaret Alt 26’, and Marcus Johnson 28’) engaged in a week of direct service in the Dallas community. Specifically, we served at Engage Dallas community partners Joppy Momma’s Farm, a community farm and garden, and Mercy Street, a sports and mentoring outreach organization that serves the youth of inner-city communities! Here are some key highlights from that week.

Joppy Momma’s Farm
Spending the morning assisting with the upkeep of the garden was such an educational and eye-opening experience. Some of the tasks that we did throughout the week included mulching, planting, harvesting, and weeding. We were not only taught how to do these things properly but also the amount of care that goes into completing these practices weekly in order to maintain the garden. Some of the highlights from our time at Joppy Momma’s included harvesting lettuce, planting bell pepper sprouts, and making our take-home tea bags of sage, rosemary, mint, and lemongrass! It was truly a delightful experience to lend a helping hand. During the week, I was reminded of the importance of supporting initiatives that provide local access to fresh produce, such as Joppy Momma’s initiative! This farm is meeting a nutritional need within a community struck by the wider inequalities we see in Dallas.

Mercy Street
Following our lunch breaks, we would spend the afternoon serving at Mercy Street. We spent Monday and Tuesday repainting their soccer field gate but due to unfavorable weather conditions, we pivoted to assisting with other tasks. When we met with the Mercy Street administrative staff, they were so grateful for what we were able to accomplish with giving the gate a newer coat in time for Mercy Street’s opening day for their various sports programs, considering the financial commitment of otherwise completely replacing the gate. On Wednesday and Thursday, we organized and rolled hundreds of shirts tied with handwritten motivation messages that would be given out to the attendees of the opening day ceremony that upcoming Saturday! This was again much appreciated by the staff, and it was quite satisfying to get the shirts prepared in time! On Friday, we were tasked with setting up chairs in the gymnasium, setting up signs around the complex, assembling a pressure washer, and getting the soccer goals in tip-top shape for Saturday! Although the tasks at times were physically demanding, it was really neat to activate our teamwork skills in the process of doing new things such as putting together the pressure washer or replacing soccer nets and moving the goal across the field. Overall, we ended up accomplishing so much that week and we collectively walked away with a renewed understanding of how important volunteers are for organizations such as Mercy Street.

Not only was this week truly enriching, but it was also fun and full of surprises! I would encourage anyone who is debating on whether to go on an Alternative Break trip to go for it and be ready to potentially step out of your comfort zone!
If you have any questions about earning your Community Engagement proficiency, please reach out to me: greenh@smu.edu

An Alternative Break Reflection

This past March I, along with a staff advisor (Brandon Kitchin), and four other SMU students (Ava, Liah, Ben, and Tommy), embarked on an Alternative Breaks trip.

Alternative Breaks offers students a chance to go on issue-specific trips during spring break. Our trip focused on the issue of Immigration and Refugee Support, which is also the Engage Dallas community-identified need for MHPS Commons. When I heard about this trip, as the MHPS Commons Engage Dallas Student Director, I instantly became interested in leading it!

Our trip’s destination was San Benito, Texas, located in the Rio Grande Valley. Throughout our 5 days there, we were graciously hosted by La Posada Providencia, a long-term shelter for immigrant and refugee newcomers who seek to settle in the United States. La Posada provides clients (what residents are referred to as) with the time and resources to become self-sustaining by, for example, helping them obtain work permits and understand the use of U.S. currency by teaching them English. Residents of La Posada receive accommodation and three meals a day, funded entirely by donations.

Over the next two days, we helped the La Posada shelter with projects around the property. During that day, we had the chance to interact with some of the shelter’s clients who mostly were from Spanish speaking countries. Fortunately, we had Spanish speakers in our group. Interestingly throughout our trip, we shared lunch and dinner with the clients and met others from countries such as Afghanistan and Haiti.

On March 12^th, we traveled to McAllen, Texas to assist with the Humanitarian Respite Center. The center serves as a short-term shelter. We were unable to take pictures in the center for privacy concerns but one of the major takeaways we had was that the center would be unable to function properly without volunteers and that the full-time staff were regularly overwhelmed. During our time there we engaged in laundry duty, help desk duty, and children’s programming.

For our next and final day of service, we lent a hand at the Rio Grande Valley Food Bank with other first-time volunteers.

We were able to package 1,248 boxes (37k pounds) of food in the span of a few hours, breaking a record for the facility!

This became a full circle moment when we learned that La Posada is one of the non-profits that the food bank serves.

Later that day we took some time to relax by making our way to South Padre Island to rest and enjoy some great seafood on the beach.

We returned to Dallas the next day with a complete shift in our perspectives on the issue of Immigration and Refugee Support and how important our roles as volunteers are. By taking the time to help non-profits you can really make a difference and directly or indirectly change a day in someone’s life whether it be sorting clothing donations or packaging food!