In 2004 the Indian Ocean Earthquake hit and produced huge tsunami’s that left many areas devastated. My senior class decided to donate all of the money that we had fundraised to the disaster relief efforts and to give up our original trip to New Orleans. Instead of doing nothing for that week, we made the decision to travel as a class to Rocky Mount, North Carolina and help build houses for people in need through Habitat for Humanity. In March, 2005 we went down there for a week. This was my first real volunteer experience that was more than a day long and really affected how I wanted to live my life. The emotions and sense of accomplishment of going somewhere and helping people in need really affected my outlook on the world and made me want to live my life differently. Since then I have made great efforts to go on as many trips as possible all over the country, and locally, to help and learn about different people and organizations in need. My next step was joining Alternative Breaks, a student run volunteer organization that helps facilitate trips for college students to different areas in the country for winter break, spring break and they also have weekend trips to local areas. I believe Alternative Breaks is a great way to get involved with peers that are interested in the same things that you are. They place you on a trip with up to 11 other people that you don’t know to help with the group dynamics and there’s a strict no drug or alcohol policy even for 21 year olds. This helps the people mesh well together so that there are no limitations for everyone and so that the group will bond as a whole. The first trip that I went on was to Fries, Virginia in February 2008 and the issue that we worked with was Rural Culture. We went to a poverty stricken area that was affected by the closing of a Budweiser plant. This cut out many of the jobs and the money coming into this small town area. The next year I applied to be a site leader for an Alternative Breaks trip. Throughout that year I worked with one other person to plan the details of our trip to Galveston, Texas. Being a site leader really helped me to learn and become more interested in the organization and I decided to be a participant on a winter break trip as well as a weekend trip. In December, 2008 I went to the freezing town of Duluth, Minnesota and worked with the Affordable Housing issue.  We worked with two different organizations in the area, Women in Construction and AICHO. Women in Construction is one of the top leading non-profit organization that trains women in different construction trades and helps employ them. AICHO is the American Indian Community Housing Organization that helps provide affordable housing to American Indians in the area. We helped renovate current affordable housing units from single unit apartments into family housing apartments.  In February of 2009 I went to Boyne City, Michigan for a weekend trip through Alternative Breaks and worked with the Sports & Recreation issue that provides adaptive skiing and snowboarding to disabled children and adults. Finally, I got to lead my trip to Galveston, Texas in March 2009 that helped in the cleanup and rebuilding of those affected by Hurricane Ike. This was a very rewarding experience because it enabled me to bring nine other people who had never volunteered or been on an Alternative Break before and open their eyes to things that they had never experienced. Four of the individuals that I took for their first experience are now site leading their own trips through Alternative Breaks for this academic school year. It’s great knowing that I had an effect not only on the communities that we went to help whose belongings and lives had been ripped apart by Hurricane Ike, but also that I helped make an impact in the individuals that I took with me. Every trip that I went on the people that we were helping and the communities that we were volunteering in never understood why a group of high school or college aged students would want to volunteer their time during their winter or spring break to go help others. I think that each group that I was with made a huge impact on the communities and opened the people’s eyes to see that there are young people in the world that want to make a difference, even if it’s just volunteering for a week.  I think our efforts really helped give hope to the people in these areas that there are selfless people in the world that would give up their time to go volunteer.