Creating Your Vision

What is your vision for the campus and/or community?

I hope to see the students at the University of Illinois at Chicago completely involved with their surrounding community, serving and volunteering their time while becoming aware and active in social issues that affect our fellow citizens. This means that they will be active down the street, around the city, and across the country.

Assessing Your Campus and Community

What campus/community problem does your blueprint address? What structures, practices and policies institutionalize the problem?

My blueprint addresses the campus problem of student apathy. While often unintentional and seemingly unavoidable, it seems as though the large percentage of UIC's student body is detached from or ignorant of pressing social issues that affect countless individuals including themselves. Because UIC is a public urban institution in the heart of one of America's largest cities, it attracts the diversity of students that the city represents. More than eighty percent of students are on some type of financial aid and more than one-third are first-generation college students. UIC is statistically rated as one of the five most diverse campuses in the country.

Because the vast majority of UIC students are juggling school with jobs and a long commute home, they do not have the opportunity to become involved in service activities and be exposed to the needs of this country because they are caught in a cycle of school, work, and commute. The rigor of the college curriculum accompanied with students' individual financial situations leave little time for activism and service. While Alternative Spring Break offers many opportunities for service during winter and spring break, times when traditionally students have more freedom, rising prices especially with gas have increased the cost of traveling.

Some of the problems that face America as a whole are more than evident on a micro level in Chicago, and yet so many of the UIC students do not have time to see or care about them or have the money and resources to tackle them head on. Immigrant rights, homelessness, healthcare, public schools, and affordable housing are glaring problems in dire need of attention just around the corner from campus and further magnified in particular regions of the country.

What communities will you work with?

• Campus community
• Nationwide community

Setting Goals and Deliverables

• Goal 1: Increase awareness of ASB and thus social issues surrounding the campus and country
• Have a total of at least 1000 email addresses for the ASB listserv by the start of the new semester after winter trips have returned
• Advertise for each ASB event 3 weeks beforehand using fliers, listservs, and posters
• Goal 2: Increase involvement of students in activities relating to pressing social issues
• Have one local community service activity planned per month starting in November, each with at least 12 participants
• Have more than 100 applicants for the winter trips, and 120 applicants for the spring trips
• Offer 8 trips for the winter break and 10 trips for the spring break
• Keep the per-participant trip cost at $150, to encompass food, housing, and transportation for the week
• Goal 3: Develop leadership skills of participants through student-led discussions and events
• Have each site leader hold a trip-specific discussion on the issue with the team at least one week before departure
• Have a different participant lead his/her own discussion with the group each day of the service trip, including the drive there and the drive back
• Have two different participants co-lead the group at the volunteer site each day of the week
• Keep a collective online blog or written journal of reflection during the trips to improve students ability to reflect and combine their experiences with their knowledge; require daily entries from each participant

What is your primary approach? Leadership and Capacity Building

Why did you choose this approach?

This approach essentially encapsulates the mission of Alternative Spring Break and the goals I have for it in this coming year. By having classes and workshops before the trips depart, students will have a good background regarding a particular issue to make for a more meaningful experience. It encourages people to continue fighting for social justice beyond just the week long trip and it provides leadership and group building skills. The trips will provide exposure to new experiences which in turn will encourage participants to speak about their service far after it is completed, helping the ASB mission expand.

Did you have secondary approaches? What are they?

Organizing, Network and Alliance Building

What will your tactics and activities be?

Fundraising - The most important tactic for ASB at UIC is fundraising because we attend a university that cannot simply handover large amounts of money to support student organizations. Additionally, the majority of UIC students can only pay a certain amount to attend these weeklong service trips, no matter how badly they want to participate. The entire board is working very hard to gather items for our annual silent auction for November 6th, where the bulk of our fundraising will happen. As President, I am working with campus departments and influential individuals in order to work out donations.

Publicity - The auction will be very well advertised, especially with the precursor general body meeting where we will reveal the 7 or 8 sites that will be the target service locations across America. Because college students in general do not have much extra money to spend, publicity needs to tackle faculty and staff who can help support the silent auction.

Community service - While the overall goal of ASB is to immerse students in diverse locations across the country, a community outreach event will be held not only for publicity but also so individuals can get a taste of what issues are out there.

Site Development - Without this committee on the ASB Executive Board, ASB would not exist. Because we are aiming so high in comparison to past years, the site developers have to be on task in order to have everything completely planned by mid-October. We are planning 7-8 trips that should ideally all tackle different issues. Our most popular trip in the last 2 ASB seasons has been a trip to work with Cesar Chavez's LUPE organization (La Union del Pueblo Entero). This trip sends a team of volunteers down to the Texas-Mexico border to work with migrant farm workers to see first hand the issues of immigration facing this country. However, this trip is the furthest trip by far, and with rising gas costs, we hope that we can still afford to send this hugely popular and life-altering trip.

Site leader training - Because I want to implement a more academic twist to the ASB experience, it is necessary to train the site leaders who will be leading the various trips across the country. They should not only be effective leaders, but they are the ones who are responsible for educating their trip participants about the social issue that their trip will be addressing. For example, if the trip destination is a Habitat for Humanity project, the site leader should put together a presentation, assign readings, and hold discussions on affordable housing our country before the trip departs. They will also be responsible for organizing post-trip lectures educating other UIC students about their particular experience.

Connecting Back to Vision

How does your strategy contribute to your vision for your campus and/or your community?

By increasing the number of trips, the participation in ASB overall will increase. Publicity will help spread the word of our mission, and all of our efforts will help contribute towards our vision of a more active, caring, service-oriented, and progressive campus.

Resources and skills you will need

What skills do you need for this approach?

Fundraising, letter writing, negotiation