This weekend, as some students head home or to vacation destinations for spring break, others will depart for a week of service, simplicity and social justice as they participate in one of the Creighton Center for Service and Justice’s spring break service trips.

This spring break, 175 participants, including the Rev. Michael Rossmann, S.J., will serve at 22 different sites.

The trips, which are either five or seven days, span a range of cities and service sites from as local as South Omaha to as distant as Wyoming, each one offering a different experience for the participants.

The Fall and Spring Break Service Trip Leadership Team, comprised of 11 seniors who work with the Creighton Center for Service and Justice (CCSJ), began coordinating the trips last year, following spring break.

“The leadership team is responsible for coordinator formation, fundraising, placement, meetings before the trip and any additional planning and organizational tasks,” Arts & Sciences senior and leadership team member Kate Kogler said.

To divide up the necessary planning and tasks that make the service trips run smoothly, the leadership team splits up into committees that handle each aspect of the trips.

Kogler is part of the reunion committee, a group that plans and organizes the participant reunion following the trips.

Other committees include send-off service, soup and stories, logistics/food, host sites and fundraising. The team also works collectively to train trip coordinators in facilitating group interactions and reflections and prepares them for logistical responsibilities.

Each of the leadership team members and coordinators pointed to a prior service trip as their motivation for getting involved as a leader.

“I wanted to get involved on leadership team because I had a lot of meaningful experiences on [past Creighton] service trips and because I really felt at home in the community that evolves around service trip leaders and participants,”  Arts & Sciences senior and leadership team member Maureen Book said. “I had really admired all of the wonderful past service trip leaders and I always aspired to be like them.”

Arts & Sciences senior and trip coordinator Asialee Drews said this year she wanted to not just be a member but a coordinator.

“At this point, after having been on three other service trips throughout my time at Creighton, I figured that the time had come to coordinate a trip,” Drews said. “All of my experiences with service have shaped me, my passions and my future and I am so excited and blessed to get the opportunity to share this with others.”

In planning and preparing for the service trips the leadership team faced many challenges, but each agrees that they found encouragement from their team members and participants.

“The most challenging part of the planning was the logistics,” Arts & Sciences senior and leadership team member Claire Bowens said. “This is a huge program. It takes a lot of finances, time and energy, but the team was incredible and we got everything done efficiently. The easiest part comes from the energy of the coordinators and the participants. They make it easy for us to form them because they are so passionate, eager and excited.”

Drews said that although it can be stressful to plan these trips, she has more than enjoyed her experience thus far.

“I would also say a big challenge was getting organized and taking time from the busy school year to sit down and plan and also reflect on what lies ahead,” Drews said. “But the moment when you first meet your group and see them grow, spiritually, mentally and emotionally from day one, makes all the work worth it.”

The service trips play an important role in Creighton’s emphasis on the Jesuit values, including Magis, Cura Personalis and forming and educating agents of change. They strive to leave a lasting impact on participants and planners alike.

“Without a doubt, I think the service trips are important,” Arts & Sciences senior and leadership team member Mike Rios said. “The trips expand your worldview in a way you are simply not able to while here at Creighton. They offer students a chance to step outside their own comfort zone to experience how others in this world live, how they think and what they go through. It has raised the social consciousness in students’ minds in the past and I know it can continue to do so in the future.”

“I think Creighton students who participate in these trips are impacted by their heightened sense of awareness of their own social reality,” Book said. “A lot of students are motivated to continue participating in these trips or to continue service work in Omaha. I also believe that the trips help students become better thinkers who are motivated to continue to apply what they learned on their trips to their own reality or life at Creighton, whether in the classroom or in the community.”

Those participating in the spring break service trips range from upperclassmen that have been on several trips, to first-time freshmen, to Jesuits.

Arts & Sciences freshman Carolyn Pokorney is going to Su Casa Catholic Worker House in Chicago, which is a shelter that “provides space and healing for displaced Hispanic families, many dealing with immigration issues.”

“This is the first service trip I’ve ever had the chance to be a part of, so I’m a little nervous, as I know I will be put out of my comfort zone,” Pokorney said. “However, I’m excited to spend a week with a great group of people while doing something for the benefit of others. I think the entire experience will be really rewarding.”

Rossmann, who currently works in the CCSJ, is going to Okolona, Miss., to help with an after-school program, assist the sisters who run it and act as a support person for his service group.

“I feel my experience working at the CCSJ would be incomplete without going on one of the service trips,” Rossman said. “These trips often serve as a launching pad for further involvement in the CCSJ and the Omaha community and lead to commitment to service and justice beyond one’s life at Creighton. Service trips were extremely formative in my own time in college, and I look forward to accompanying a group of students in their encounter with realities likely different than their normal experience.”

Applications for fall break service and justice trips 2012 will be available starting March 26.