About AWOL

What We Do

Send USD students of all disciplines on service-learning alternative breaks across the country.

The aim is to connect people through a shared learning experience on a specific social issue and collaborative action through community engagement. We promote justice, empowerment, and community. Alternative breakers examine root causes and the complexities of social issues. By immersion, we learn about organizations working to address, mitigate, prevent, and support communities facing the obstacles of injustice.

Alternative Breaks engage students by offering immersion and collaborative work in communities to address needs. Students work and live in places outside of the usual spatial and social context that university life affords. This practice challenges held notions of the way the world works and helps students consider how their actions at home have clear implications. The Alternative Break program works to create strong student leaders, along with sending a clear message of alliance to community partners.

Provide local service-learning opportunities through alternative weekends.

It is essential to learn about social issues affecting local communities, and the organizations that address these issues, to practice making community a priority in what we value and how we make life choices.

Host Serve & Learn (first-year student early move-in program).

Each August we welcome and introduce new USD students to Vermillion and the AWOL organization through three days of social and community engagement activities.

Mission: To cultivate positive social change through community collaboration, the AWOL program immerses students in educational service-learning experiences that expose participants to diverse social issues and encourages applying those experiences to enhance justice in their communities.

Vision: By facilitating transformational service experiences, AWOL empowers Yotes to become leaders and life-long agents of social change that embrace diverse situations, people, and perspectives.

Our Core Values: Diversity, Education, Application

Diversity: We recognize diversity as an important factor in understanding social issues. Diverse situations encourage students to step outside their comfort zone and therefore recognize different solutions to problems. By exposing students to diverse people, perspectives and social issues, we hope to aid them in moving towards active citizenship.

Education: We provide the participants the opportunity to look critically at root causes of social issues and evaluate their role in society. Participants are provided with basic education about site-specific issues prior to the trip, learn about those issues through first-hand experiences on the trip, and are challenged to synthesize their experiences after the trip.

Application: By utilizing experiences and education, we enable participants to become active citizens, whose community becomes a priority in values and life choices. We provide participants with avenues for continued community involvement and support their efforts to continue learning about social issues.

A Brief History of AWOL

2004: AWOL program started at USD as part of the growing national alternative break movement. They sent one group to Tulsa, OK over spring break with a focus on the foster care system.

2005-2008: AWOL learned more about the movement and service-learning programs and started to look at becoming a student org. Travel and planning was largely staff led with a student site leader assisting.

2009: AWOL Executive Board created, and student site-leaders began to take the lead for their groups. A focus on training student leaders took shape. Both an international and local destination were added to alternative breaks.

2010-2017: AWOL grows! In addition to more groups per year, alternative weekends became a staple of the program, AWOL incubated two additional student-led groups that became chapters—Med Life and Food Recovery Network

2018-present: AWOL adjusts to meet changing trends and needs including the use of Learning Partners, number of groups, and reacting to a pandemic.

Today: COVID-19 travel restrictions were lifted for the academic year 2021-2022 and AWOL aims to send 4 winter, 1 spring, and 1 summer alternative break groups. This is approximately half of our pre-pandemic numbers. We are back up to offering 6 alternative weekends as well. AWOL will be working with former and new community partners and slowly rebuilding our membership and leadership.

The Alternative Break Movement

AWOL is a member of the national nonprofit organization Break Away, which began building the alternative break and active citizen movement more than 30 years ago. USD's program joins over 200 other chapter schools that organize and promote alternative breaks for social change and to empower the next generation of leaders, like you.

An alternative break is a service-learning experience where a group of students engages in direct service, typically for a week, over one of their academic breaks (at USD this includes winter, spring, or summer). Each alternative break group has a particular social issue focus. Exploration of the issue begins before leaving for your destination through pre-break departure meetings and education. Participants engage in activities to educate themselves and each other about the root causes and social impact of their social issues.

During an alternative break, participants engage in approximately 30 hours of hands-on work with relevant organizations, along with location-based education. As part of the alternative break, groups also try to enjoy some of the great features that draw visitors to the community. It is important, however, to know that visiting tourist destinations, shopping, and eating out is not the focus of an alternative break. The week is challenging physically and emotionally; downtime at the end of the day is when students rest and relax before starting the next day's service and activities.

The hands-on service experience challenges you to think critically, with compassion and understanding, about pressing social issues. This forms the foundation for how we can choose to prioritize values such as solidarity, community, and social justice when making both small and large choices and decisions. Participants leave an alternative break more knowledgeable and empowered to take meaningful action that supports their local, regional, national, and global communities. To learn more about what helps sustain the movement, look at Break Away's components of a quality alternative break and how alternative breaks are different than some other forms of service-based trips.

Alternative Break DefinitionsAlternative break keywords, as defined by Break Away staff.

components of Quality Community Engagement

Strong Engagement

Programs allow participants to engage in direct or “hands-on” projects and activities that address unmet social needs, as determined by the community.

Community interaction during service projects and throughout the week is highly encouraged.

Alcohol and Drug Free

When alcohol and other drugs are consumed by members, issues of community impact, legality, liability, personal safety, and group cohesion are of concern. Hence, AWOL has a written policy on how this is dealt with on an alternative break.

Identity Consciousness

Before engaging with the community, participants ask themselves:

➔ Who am I as a person who engages with the community?

➔ What are the identities of those in the communities I am engaging͎?

➔ What forms of power are associated with my social and positional identities (i͇.e͇., volunteer and association with the university)?

Equity

Strong programs engage participants in community engagement that aims to redistribute resources, power, and wealth. Community engagement should be sustainable and thought about in the long term rather than the immediate.

Orientation

Prior to departure, participants are oriented to the mission and vision of the community, community partner, or organization with which they will be working.

Education

Effective education provides facts and opinions from all perspectives on the issue, including ways that participants' personal life choices are connected to the social issue.

Training

Participants are provided with adequate training in skills necessary to carry out tasks and projects during the trip. Ideally, this training will take place before departure, although in some instances, it may occur once participants have reached their site.

Examples of training include basic construction, learning how to work with children, or gaining first aid skills.

Reflection

During the trip, participants are encouraged to reflect upon the experience they are having, synthesizing the direct service, education, and community interaction components. Time is set aside for this to take place both individually and as a group.

Reorientation

Upon return to campus, participants transfer the lessons learned on break by identifying local organizations for continued education or service, sharing their experience to raise awareness of social issues, and by organizing or joining other small groups to take action on local issues through direct service, advocacy, and/or philanthropy.

How Alternative Breaks Are Different

A few elements that distinguish alternative breaks (ABs) from other service immersion experiences such as voluntourism, mission trips, etc., include:

ABs are in great part student developed and led. They are as much a leadership development process, as a service experience.
ABs are drug and alcohol-free experiences.
ABs emphasize group and individual reflection that is directly tied to the social issue and service. They seek a mutually beneficial experience in which the community benefits from the service provided by students, and the students benefit in their education by serving the community.
Rather than an individual experience, ABs involve students from the same institution and encourage building strong group dynamics prior and during the experience. Volunteer vacations or voluntourism groups often meet for the first time when they arrive in the location of the trip.
AB groups meet and prepare for their experience in advance of their departure. Preparation includes learning about the social issues, learning about the community and the community organizations you will be visiting, becoming oriented with the mission and values of the organization, developing knowledge about social justice, and building team dynamics.

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