Students on Break Learn from Communities Far From Brunswick

Students on Break Learn from Communities Far From Brunswick

The planning for this year's trips began last year, right around this time. Students who want to lead Alternative Breaks must first submit well-researched proposals, which are approved by a committee of students, faculty, and McKeen Center staff.

In the fall, the student leaders attend weekly seminars led by McKeen Center staff to help them plan their trips and prepare to teach an eight-week seminar for their participants in the weeks before the March break.

This year's five excursions examined a range of issues, from immigration to community-based education. Artificial intelligence was a focus for the first time (on the trip to Hawai'i). A total of ten students traveled on each trip, which are free for students on financial aid.

• Salinas, California: Immigrant Advocacy and Resilience
  Learn how migrant farmworkers unite to address the challenges shaping their community, led by Noemi Guzman '26 and Mauricio Cuba Almeida '27
• New York City: Listening to Stories of the City
  Explore New York City's immigrant experience through storytelling, connecting with those who humanize immigrant voices, led by Lucia Galdamez '28 and Oscar Gonzalez '28
• Clarksdale, Mississippi: Housing as History
  Combat the ongoing poverty crisis through Habitat for Humanity in the Home of the Blues, led by Eve Foley '28 and Tolly Kaiser '28
• San Juan, Puerto Rico: Educational Equity
  Gain hands-on experience supporting Montessori education and explore the intersections of learning, culture, and social justice in San Juan, led by Belen Montesinos Canales '28 and Olga Isailovic '28
• Hawai'i: AI for Indigenous Past and Futures in Hawai'i
  Explore AI for Indigenous knowledge and climate action, showing how Hawai'i blends technology with tradition. Participants will see AI support sustainable tourism and environmental preservation, led by Andrea Cordova Cisneros '26, Wing Kiu Lau '26

Keep reading for more details about the students' experiences in Hawai'i, Mississippi, and Puerto Rico.

Using AI for Conservation on the Big Island

After leading an Alternative Break trip last year about immigration and health care in New York City, Andrea Cordova Cisneros'26 wanted to do it again. "I enjoyed creating a community of Bowdoin students, taking them to New York and teaching them about a topic close to me and my coleader, Larah," she said.

This year, she set her eyes a bit farther from Maine. She asked her longtime friend Wing Kiu Lau '26 if she would join her, and the two decided they wanted to learn more about how Hawai'i is trying to conserve its environment and Indigenous culture from the threats of overtourism and climate change.

They were especially curious about how people are using AI in these efforts, or whether the destructive environmental impacts of AI might be overshadowing possible positive applications. "We were inspired by the Hastings Initiative and the increasing conversations around AI at Bowdoin," Cordova Cisneros said.

Part of their itinerary included visiting researchers and organizations using AI. A University of Hawai'i professor spoke to students about how he employs an AI model to track native birdsongs as they change with the climate, part of his effort to protect endemic birds from becoming extinct. Just forty-two native bird species remain, down from 113 known native species.

Others demonstrated how they are using AI to try to save an endangered native tree at risk from a fungal disease known as Rapid ʻŌhiʻa Death. AI is helping track resistant specimens, capturing and cataloging their DNA.

Additionally, students lent a hand to more old-fashioned techniques to protect the island, and spent a day pulling up invasive California grass from a wetland area.

About half of the students on the trip came with computer science backgrounds; all were interested in exploring issues around AI. Ulemj Munkhtur '26, a computer science and economics major, said she was glad to see how AI is being tailored to help the region. "I realized how unique the issues Hawai'i faces are because of its distance from other lands and peoples," she said, adding that the trip opened her eyes to what AI can do and what she can do with AI.

The environment was a big focus of the trip, both to learn from and enjoy. Cordova Cisnerossaid some of the best parts of the week were visits to unique ecosystems, including a waterfall, the tallest mountain in the world (measured from the seafloor), a dormant volcano, and two types of beaches.

But the trip was not without incident. The Kilauea volcano erupted and a storm kept them on the island for an additional three days. "That made us more acutely aware of the environmental challenges and how they're intertwined with AI," Lau said.

The students, however, took it in stride. "It was a great mix of fun and service work because we got to see the Kilauea volcano erupt, went to beaches, hiked, explored downtown, saw beautiful sunsets, ate poke, and overall just had a fun time getting to know each other," Munkhtur said.

History, Culture, and Community Action in the Deep South

Since Eve Foley '28 first traveled to Clarksdale, Mississippi, in middle school to work on Habitat for Humanity homes, she's been devoted to housing and poverty justice work.

During her first year at Bowdoin, she missed both construction and directly helping people. So when it came time to pitch Alternative Break trips to the McKeen Center, Foley shared an idea at dinner with her friend Tolly Kaiser '28.

Kaiser immediately got on board; he was born in the South and said he feels deeply connected to the region. "Students were exposed to a radically different way of life and culture than what we experience at Bowdoin," he said about the trip.

Participant Abdullah Hashimi '27, who grew up in Brooklyn, joined the expedition because he wanted to get involved with service and had heard great things about Alternative Breaks from friends.

"I was particularly drawn to the Mississippi trip because as a history major, I have learned a lot about the history of this area of the country...but I had never actually set foot in the American South," he said. "It's one thing to learn about a place's history and its lasting effects on its people; it's another thing to see it and speak with people."

In pre-trip seminars at Bowdoin, Foley and Kaiser discussed Reconstruction, Emmett Till, the civil rights movement, Southern poverty, and voluntourism. They invited Colby College history professor Chris Asch to talk about his nonprofit, Sunflower Freedom Project, and his experience living in the South.

Over the spring break, the group explored the regional history and culture (focusing a lot on blues music), and did hands-on work to dive as deeply as they could into the area. They visited Dockery Farms, considered the birthplace of the delta blues. They stopped at the Devil's Crossroads, where myth has it that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil for his musical gifts. They drove through the land where Fannie Lou Hammer worked as a sharecropper.

They visited a Southern Baptist church, ate Kool-Aid pickles, met with blues musician Big T Williams, went to the club Ground Zero Blues, and toured the National Civil Rights Museum and Emmett Till Interpretive Center. They investigated plantation history, socioeconomic disparities, and community organizing.

And they constructed and shingled a roof and porch.

"Everything we did with the goal to further participants' understanding of the legacies of enslavement and the history of the area-with particular attention to civil rights and the blues, trying to answer the question of why we students from Maine were all the way in Mississippi constructing a home for a local family," Foley said.

Kaiser and Foley said they heard from their team that the experience fostered a sense of community, not just among those on the trip but also with the communities they engaged with.

Hashimi noted that building the house was especially bonding. "I absolutely loved getting to know each and every person on my trip, and it would not have been possible without this work uniting us in the way it did," he said. "Everyone knew how important the work we were doing would be for the community and especially for the future owner of the home, so we wanted to do everything well."

Empowering Education in Puerto Rico

Trip leaders Belen Montesinos Canales '28 and Olga Isailovic '28 both went to Guatemala last spring on an Alternative Break trip focused on education. "Going to Guatemala gave us the idea for this trip," Isailovic said.

"That was the starting point," Montesinos Canales agreed. An international student from Peru, she also reveled in spending a week mid-semester in a Spanish-speaking country.

The two decided to plan their own Alternative Break in a Spanish-speaking country, this time focusing on Puerto Rico. Isailovic, who is from Ohio, speaks Spanish and is a Romance languages and literatures major.

They turned their attention to learning about Puerto Rico's educational system. They connected with a Montessori school-the Juan Ponce de León School in San Juan-which invited them to spend a week with their students and teachers.

Puerto Rico has sixty Montessori schools, all free for children and many supported by their local communities and a strong national nonprofit. This is unlike the US, where the majority of Montessori schools are private and tuition-based.

"Sometimes we deny the uniqueness of Puerto Rico," Montesinos Canales said. "So the purpose of the trip was to learn about how education can shape culture, history, and community."

Each morning, the group volunteered at the school. Their trip also happened to overlap with Afro-Puerto Rico Week, when the island celebrates its African heritage. "In the classes we were in, the teacher would sit down and say to the students, 'Everyone here is of African, Native, and Spanish descent,'" Isailovic said. "That's ingrained in the children."

Much of the day-to-day curriculum is also grounded in instilling in the children a sense of pride in who they are and where they are from, the leaders said. "The class was full of culture and an awareness of connecting students with their Puerto Rican identity," Montesinos Canales said.

Additionally, the leaders planned cultural and educational experiences for their participants, including a bomba workshop to learn about Puerto Rico's national dance. "It wasn't just about learning the dance, it was about learning the history of resistance and expression in the dance," Montesinos Canales said.

Vanessa Partida-Saucedo '28, a trip participant, said that the celebration of the culture and land was contagious. "A sense of community and unity was universal everywhere we went in Puerto Rico," she said. "The genuine kindness of the people there is a reflection of this."

Montesinos Canales and Isailovic hope that students in their group will become advocates for Puerto Rico and its people, encouraging others to learn about its history, culture, and educational system. "Hopefully we can keep a partnership with the school, through the Alternative Break program or a class interacting with them," Isailovic said.