Students choose volunteering for spring
break through UUSC workcamp

Ten student volunteers journeyed from the cold of Villanova, Pa., to San Diego County, Calif. to spend their spring break working on the La Jolla Indian Reservation. Unlike many of their friends who were vacationing in warmer climates, these volunteers were staked out in tents in the cold and damp Palomar Mountains. While on the reservation, the students tutored youth ages 6-14, decorated the reservation's Education Center, and made connections with the La Jolla community and with each other.

Now in its sixth year of sponsoring workcamps on Native American reservations, the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee organized this Alternative Spring Break workcamp with the Luiseño Indians at the La Jolla Indian Reservation. This opportunity is designed primarily for college students looking for meaningful experiences during their mid-semester vacation period.

The volunteers spent their week working with the community, and learning from local Indian tribal representatives who also spoke with the volunteers, sharing their personal experiences and histories from the reservation.

Learning through doing
From the normal rush of college life to the slower pace of the campground and the reservation, the volunteers took pleasure in the details - playing cards with Emily, a tutor at the Education Center, playing basketball and soccer with the children in the center's gymnasium, hiking through the beautiful Palomar Mountains, and helping the children with their homework and reading.

"If I had two words to describe this experience they are 'awesome' and 'eye-opening'" said Dan Gulick of Pennsylvania. "This trip, listening to those on the reservation speak about the culture and their daily lives was very interesting. This will be what I take back and never forget."

Lauren Kostiw of Connecticut, who helped lead this group of students from Villanova University, found this to be a wonderful opportunity to truly experience what she had learned through the classroom. "There are Indian reservations all around and before this trip, I have never really known anything about their culture except for what I read in a textbook."

Bringing learning home
One of UUSC's partner organizations spoke to the group of youth, encouraging them to share their experiences back home through advocacy. Lupe Lopez, of Alianza Indigena, an Anaheim, Calf.-based nonprofit that addresses discrimination issues facing indigenous groups, discussed the issue of using Indians as sports team and school mascots.

"What do you say to an opposing team, when the mascot is an Indian?" Lupe Lopez asked the volunteers. "You chant 'Kill the Indians' and 'Beat the Indians.' How do you think that makes an Indian feel?"

Ms. Lopez encouraged volunteers, upon their return home, to take up the issue of banning the use of Indian mascots. She noted that Rep. Frank Pallone, a Democrat from New Jersey's 6th District, is the lead sponsor of a bill (H.R. 5487) created to eliminate such discriminatory mascots. All of the volunteers said they will most definitely return home to seek out other opportunities to work in Indian and other communities. The workcamp provided validity for most of the volunteers.

Upcoming workcamp opportunities
UUSC's next workcamp opportunity is the On the Border workcamp for adults, which will take place along the Arizona/Mexico border from May 1-4, 2003. UUSC is partnering with BorderLinks, an Arizona-based nonprofit organization, to offer this unique workcamp experience. Volunteers will travel into Mexico to explore such issues as immigration, discrimination and civil rights.

For more information about this or other workcamps, please visit our Web site, or contact Kelli Larsen at klarsen@uusc.org or 800 388-3920, ext.227.