What is an Alternative Break?

What is the Alternative?

Amid college students spending their spring, winter, or summer breaks relaxing, working, celebrating, and catching up on life, there are groups of students who recognize that they wish to become active citizens of a broader community.  Instead of spending a week at home, these students set out to participate in an Alternative Break.

The Alternative Break trip is a structured experience where college students engage in service and immersion with a community for a week.  Structured around a social issue, these trips are highly intensive and immersive experiences.  While students spend the week doing service and interacting with local community members in the location where they travel, they are also engaging in critical discussion and reflection around the social issue.   Through this experience, students are challenged to think differently and ask critical questions to get at root causes of systemic social issues. 

Through these trips, many college students are becoming active citizens, striving for what is best in their own communities and communities around he world.  While these trips take students to various cities and countries, they recognize the interconnected nature of the work they do. Upon returning to campus, they are equipped to enter communities and engage in dialogue as result of their trip. 

Alternative Breaks have been happening on college campuses since the early 1990s, and have grown to be a nation wide movement. Oglethorpe University is a part of this nation wide movement engaging students in a trip to New Orleans each Winter Break and a trip to Guatemala every other Spring Break.