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 12th, 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!
Here’s what we discovered since our modest beginning in October 2020: While our community partners enjoy having Engage Dallas groups come on-site and serve alongside them, sometimes they need only one or two students — not an entire group.
While Engage Dallas still offers monthly, group service through the Residential Commons, solo service is a type of