Alternative Break
The Eight Components of a Quality Alternative Break Experience
Direct Service: The service projects selected for Alternative Break are intended to provide transformational learning and developmental experiences. They feature sponsorship by local agencies that are proponents of the goals of Alternative Break programs. They offer community based projects that include engagement with members of the community and exposure to the problems, customs and culture of the community and region.
Orientation: The Pitt Alternative Break experience starts with an application process and the selection of a service site then proceeds to an orientation program designed to provide participants with the mission and goals of the program, the responsibilities of participants, expectations for participation, information about the host agency, the service project and the community.
Education: The Alternative Break teams examine the context of their respective service project in terms of the broader social issues that underlie the problem and the nature of the region and community in which they will serve.
Training: Teams are prepared to understand the specific content of their service work and are prepared to carry out their tasks.
Reflection: The participants' individual and group experiences are processed by reflections throughout the experience. Participants keep personal journals and the teams reflect on their day's experience in the evening. A team reflection activity at the end of the project capsulates the meaning and value of their team's experience. Program evaluations by participants are conducted after returning to campus.
Reorientation: Teams meet upon their return to campus to share their personal experience with one another, to discuss the possibility for continued service in the local community related to the service they performed and to discuss the next step on their personal path toward lifelong active citizenship. All of the participants in all of the Alternative Break projects come together in a celebration to share their experiences with each other and the campus community.
Diversity: Participation is open to all undergraduate students and reflects the demographics of the student body. Participants can expect to address problems and engage members of the community with whom they otherwise would have had little or no direct experience or contact. The experience is an immersion into a diverse environment where in the participants will experience, reflect upon, learn from and understand the attendant social issues.
Alcohol and Other Drug Free: Participants sign an agreement that they will refrain from any consumption of alcohol or use of any other drug for the duration of their service project from departure to return to campus. Those that violate the agreement are subject to disciplinary action and refund of the cost of their participation.