Alternative break trip focuses on LGBT advocacy, awareness
When one group of students heads to Washington, D.C., over winter break, it won’t be for the sightseeing.
USC’s Office of Community Service Programs will send students to the district to help out in the capital, and this year, they’ll focus of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) advocacy and awareness issues as a part of the university’s alternative break program, the first during winter break.
“The main goal of [alternative break] trips is to educate students about pressing social issues while making a direct impact on the community,” Noël Marsh, a third-year religion and psychology student coordinating the trip, wrote in an email response.
In Washington, they’ll visit organizations like the Human Rights Campaign, the National Center for Transgender Equality and the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund and Leadership Institute. They’ll volunteer at Food & Friends, a nonprofit that supports people who have been diagnosed with HIV, AIDS and other serious illnesses, according to Marsh.
It’s an experience that has already helped Marsh expand her world view.
“Planning this trip has really given me an appreciation for the struggles the LGBT community faces every day, and how much work is still left to be done in order to achieve equality and acceptance in multiple areas,” Marsh wrote.
Marsh will be joined by Melanie Bracht, a first-year business student who wrote in an email response that she’d gained much from her experience with another alternative break trip.
Bracht traveled to Johns Island, S.C., over fall break, where she worked with Habitat for Humanity and gained experiences she thought she might not have otherwise as she built trusses, put in doors and worked with the families she was helping.
“As college students, we live in a university bubble,” Bracht wrote. “I think it’s important to go out and experience the real world. So many people are struggling with a vast array of problems.”
The trip to Washington will run Jan. 5–11 and will cost $150, which covers food, housing and transportation.