Some students spend spring break with an exciting week in Cabo or relaxing in Arizona. Others swap swimsuits and hours in the sun for tool belts and tutoring.
This spring, 186 students will travel in 24 groups to service sites from Wind River, Wyo., to Morton, Miss., to Cleveland.
For Stefanie Stedman, Arts & Sciences junior, service trips have shaped her college career. Stedman volunteered at Children’s Hospital of Omaha throughout middle school and high school and enjoyed the experience.
“The whole reason I chose Creighton was because of their promotion of service,” Stedman said. “That’s what the school is rooted in, and that’s why I wanted to go on a service trip because I kept hearing great things about CCSJ, so I decided to try it out.”
After her first trip to the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota during her sophomore year, Stedman realized what service meant to her, and it helped define her major.
“I came in as a biology major and during my sophomore year, I took an intro social work class, and then I went on a service trip and that kind of just cemented my major,” Stedman said. “Bio just wasn’t what I was passionate about, and social work was.”
Following her first trip, Stedman realized she wanted to spend her breaks serving others. Every year since then, she has gone on every fall and spring break service trip she could. She went to Chicago with the Dominican volunteers and to the Siena/Francis House here in Omaha. Now Stedman will be going to Montgomery, Ala. where she will learn about civil rights and work with children and the elderly.
“The reason I keep going is because I went on that first fall break trip to Rosebud and absolutely fell in love with what the CCSJ stands for – what their foundational pillars are and how they try to live it out through service,” Stedman said.
For Stedman, what she enjoys most about serving others is forming relationships with the people in the communities she visits.
“I really am passionate about human relationships, and that’s what I love about social work,” Stedman said. “What I love about these trips are the people you meet and the stories that you hear.
“You can hear about things on the TV and read about them in the newspaper, but it’s not personal until you meet someone like that.”
In addition to forming relationships with those in the community, she also formed deeper relationships with the students who accompanied her on the trip.
“In all of them, you’re going to create community. One of our pillars is community and being with people, and whether it’s your community with the 10 people who go on your trip or the entire site, you’re going to build strong relationships not only with the group you go with, but with the group you serve,” she said.
After going on two service trips, Stedman joined the Fall/Spring Break Service Trips Core Team. Since October, 29 coordinators have prepared the trips to various locations.
The core team is made up of seven members, and each represents one of the seven pillars: service, solidarity, sustainability, simplicity, reflection, community and justice. Stedman’s role represents the pillar of solidarity.
“[Solidarity] is a little harder to describe because it’s not service,” Stedman said. “To me, it’s the importance of accompaniment, the importance of being with people and taking a walk with them in their own life and understanding where they’re coming from. It’s just the value of being with people.”
She encourages everyone to take part in one because of the effect the service trips have had on her, Stedman said.
“I think it’s always important to realize that we’re a society of quick fixes and wanting to do work and see results,” she said. “Just being with people and talking to people and not going, going, going really slows you down and makes you appreciate other people’s values and ways of life.”