While some University students spent their winter breaks relaxing and vegging out, others spent their time working in the United States and abroad to serve other people.
Sophomore Rebecca Wilson said the winter break her freshman year was boring and “too long,” so she knew she wanted this year to be different.
When Wilson found out that her church group, the Collegiate Christian Fellowship, was organizing a trip to New Orleans to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, she jumped at the chance to go.
“I thought it would be a really good opportunity to serve God and others,” she said.
The group stayed at Camp Hope, a renovated school building in St. Bernard Parish, where other Habitat for Humanity volunteers have stayed. In the week they were there, Wilson and the others from CCF helped with construction of new homes and with the “gutting” of old houses.
“Imagine your house filled up 10 feet with water, sitting in 100 degree weather for 10 days, then going down and sitting there for a year and a half,” Wilson said.
Volunteers had to completely clear the houses of all appliances, carpeting and possessions still inside and then knock down the drywall.
After houses are gutted – only brick homes are salvageable – they can be restored.
Genna Berube, a University senior who was one of the co-leaders of CCF’s trip, said the New Orleans residents she spoke with were extremely grateful for the help.
Wilson said the areas of New Orleans where CCF volunteers worked are very poor and seem “precarious.” Black Xs still mark the doors of houses that were searched, and other lots can been seen with enormous piles of debris that remain near where the houses once stood.
“It looks like a developing country,” she said.
Wilson said she was not as shocked by the conditions as some of the other volunteers because she has visited developing nations and has been exposed to extreme poverty. What was shocking was returning to her hometown of Davis, Calif.
“I guess I was a little shocked to be back in my neighborhood,” she said. “I was like, ‘Everything’s so nice here!’ I was thinking, ‘Wow, we are really lucky that this isn’t happening in our area, because it’s just devastating.’”
Both Wilson and Berube said there is still a lot of work to be done in New Orleans and they hope people will look into volunteering and working to fix the situation.
Junior Jonathan Rosenberg, the Student Senate vice president, spent a week of his break working in Israel to help Israelis who were affected by last year’s war with Lebanon.
Rosenberg has spent nearly two years doing Israel advocacy on campus through a program called the Grinspoon Israel Advocacy Internship run out of Hillel. His position allowed him to apply for one of five positions awarded around the United States to travel to northern Israel.
While in Israel, Rosenberg stayed in a town called Acco, which is one of the oldest cities in the world.
Rosenberg painted the insides of bomb shelters and helped clear forests of some of the 15,000 acres of trees burned during the war.
“The bomb shelters we worked on were in mixed neighborhoods,” he said. “It was amazing to see that Arab children came downstairs to see what we were doing and Jewish children did too. It was great to see that these bomb shelters were where both Arabs and Jews had to come together when Lebanon fired rockets over the homes.”
Rosenberg said Israel is very modern and looks a lot like the United States in many ways – he said even the mountains where he cleared forests look like the mountains in Eugene and have similar weather.
“It was surreal to be in a place where people have to deal with rocket fire,” he said. “We take it for granted in the United States – the safety we have.”
Working along the Lebanese border, Rosenberg regularly saw soldiers on patrol. He said seeing so many young people gave him a real feeling of what is going on there.
“It’s surreal to see people your age, too,” he said. “Military is part of who they are. They listen to the same music. They’re like you; they’re really just people like us.”
Rosenberg, whose father was born in Israel, has traveled to the country two other times – once with the birthright Israel program and once with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying group. He said that he loves Israel and wanted to go back.
He also wanted to see what Israel looked like after the war and to see first-hand how the work he does on campus helps Israel.
Rosenberg said the amazing thing about the trip was that people in the northern part of Israel feel very neglected by the international community and by Israel.
Volunteers painted the insides of the shelters with brightly colored murals, something Rosenberg said the people there requested. Citizens said the experience of being in bomb shelters is scary for children.
“They wanted there to be something peaceful about this,” he said. “There was a feeling that they felt like they weren’t alone all of the sudden when they saw American students there.”
Rosenberg said he wants people to know that Israelis are desperate for peace. He said that Israeli Arabs, Jews and Christians are all Israeli citizens who want peace.
“They’re humans,” he said. “They’re like us.”
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