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All packed and ready to go.  Leaving tonight at midnight to the Newark Airport.  The Lafayette Banner is coming with us!

I am a true believer in the idea that surrounding one’s self with something can lead to a deeper understanding of it, which is why I am excited to go to Texas in a few days.  An issue like immigration cannot be settled or thoroughly understood from any place but a border itself.  Immigration has become a more relevant issue in politics and the news, which is why I was delighted to find an ASB trip to Texas.  I would like my trip to be educational as well as rewarding.  With an issue as relevant as immigration, my trip to Texas will be interesting to share hopefully for years to come with family and friends.  Few people get a chance to fully engage themselves in learning about an issue for which they are passionate.  However, I will use this experience to do just that and to share what I have learned with those equally as passionate because I know immigration will continue to be relevant to everyone living in the United States in the years to come.

 

Yanel Garcia

January 14, 2013

There are only five days left until I embark on a memorable, educative journey. I have longed to have an opportunity to learn about immigration reform and immigrant rights in the borderline between Mexico and the United States. The reason being is that I come from a Mexican-American background, and both of my parents are immigrants from Mexico. Going to San Juan, Texas will allow me to meet and interact with Texas residents/immigrants of my same ethnic background and understand the immigration that occurs in the US-Mexico border wall.

My parents’ process of legal immigration to the United States went smoothly and appropriately. However, through my young-adult life, they shared past stories with me about friends and family coming to the United States from Mexico illegally, all in search for a better life. I have also been told stories from former classmates in high school that they witnessed US Immigration being cruel to Mexican immigrants and that they struggled to make it alive as they hitchhiked from Mexico with their families.

After being told these interesting yet heartbreaking stories, I asked myself, “What can I do to be well-informed about this social issue?” and “What can I do to promote equal rights for them?”

The moment I read through the application for ASB Texas, I knew this trip will fulfill my aspiration of knowing the lives of Mexican immigrants in other specified locations, besides my hometown Chicago, and helping them in any way to impact their lives; I simply took the “Cur Non?” initiative.

After this trip ends, I hope I return to Lafayette with the mentality that I was somehow a role model to my family and the Mexican-American community for sticking to my roots and treating immigrant rights as a topic I am devoted to.

 

 

There’s a curiously powerful lure that surrounds Costa Rica. There’s its natural environment—forests and beaches that unfurl in rugged and untamable tendrils under your feet as you walk along them; there’s the lifestyle—the sacred, unbreakable code of an easygoing, relaxed, yet full and exciting life.  And then there’s the combined urge to let yourself be consumed by the pura vida and disappear into the mountains, adopting a life of surfing, gardening, and simply soaking in life.  From the anecdotes and stories I’ve heard from those who have visited Costa Rica, it seems unbelievable that such a small country could have such a profound impact on so many lives. As I pack my bug spray, sunscreen, and sunglasses into my rucksack, I feel a surge of anticipation welling up inside me, both in eagerness to finally experience Costa Rica and with a strange foreknowledge that I’ll be extremely reluctant to leave it.

After buying all my sunscreen and printing out my insurance card, it has finally hit me that we leave for Costa Rica in two days! I have never been to somewhere so different from where I live, and have very little idea of what we will actually be doing on the farm, but I strangely am not nervous at all. It’s reassuring to know that we have team members who have experience in the field of sustainability, have been to Costa Rica before, and know Spanish, yet also comforting knowing there are other members like me who are jumping in blind. I can’t wait to leave the cold behind and get to work!

I am so excited to be embarking on my third trip with Central American Relief Efforts (CARE) to Honduras! This time will be very different, just by the simple fact that this is an ASB trip, which creates an atmosphere all its own. Besides the amazing work our team is about to do in Honduras, I am really looking forward to the relationships my teammates are about to build with one another and watching the special bonds form from this once in a lifetime circumstance that only an ASB experience can foster.I am thrilled to see how this group of people can open my eyes to new things that I have not yet uncovered during my past trips to Honduras and help educate me to new levels. I am also hopeful that they will find the same beauty I have found.

I am so eager to see the difference we can make during our time in Honduras and what impact we can make upon our return.

I applied to attend the ABCs because I was interested in the theme for the week, asset based community development (ABCD). When I read the description of ABCD, it reminded me Café Reconcile, a great restaurant and organization in New Orleans (check it out! http://reconcileneworleans.org). I had visited Café Reconcile my junior year of high school during a service trip, and its economic model has been imprinted in my mind. I did not know how to transfer that idea to ASB, however, and that is why I wanted to attend the conference.

My week in Atlanta helped to clarify that ASB trips can participate in asset based community development by finding community partners that focus on this. For example, during the week we volunteered at Healthy Belvedere, Atwood Community Gardens, and Park Pride by doing landscaping work. All of these organizations used Atlanta’s assets (weather, empty lots, neighborhood pride etc.) to address the obesity epidemic in Atlanta.

The week was about more than just ABCD though. Half of the days were spent in workshops about all the different aspects of an ASB trip or at speaker panels with local community leaders. Ideas were exchanged between all of the different programs. It was great to hear about the different methods used by other programs and to meet other students involved in their respective programs. Although the week was exhausting, I left Atlanta feeling renewed and full of energy for the coming school year and more ASB experiences!

I didn’t really know what to expect going into the ABC’s in Atlanta. I’d never been to Atlanta before, and had only ever participated in one ASB trip. I wasn’t overly dedicated to the program, just very excited to become a trip leader. I didn’t have any major visions for ASB, our my trip for the next year. All I knew was that I had an open mind and a passion for enacting global change. This is what I brought with me to Emory University. I left with almost exactly the same things. However, this open-mindedness and passion had taken an entirely new form, one that completely understood the purpose of Alternative Breaks, Asset-Based Community Development, the meaning of having a group of strangers feel like family, and what it takes to make the impact I’ve always known I wanted to make.

Not only did I learn very thoroughly the eight components of a quality alternative break, I brainstormed ways these components could be revised to better the program at Lafayette. I fully understand what it means to build a community based on what it has, not what it needs. This idea is something that I have noticed several times since I’ve come home, and is something I will remember in the future as I start to develop programs in my community, whether it is next year in Easton or ten years from now. I’ve been inspired by the Alternative Breaks movement. Seeing how passionate others are about the programs at their school has motivated me to become part of the larger movement and try to get others to do so. I realized as I was in tears looking out the window of the airplane on the way home that the week I spent with Break Away was not your average Alternative Break trip. The friends I made and the ideas we exchanged has given me tremendous insight on what it truly means to be an active citizen.