Students got their hands dirty for a good cause over winter break through the Alternative School Break trip to Costa Rica.
Alternative School Break, often referred to as by its initials, is an organization through the Landis Center for Community Engagement that allows students the opportunity to spend either their winter or spring break volunteering with a community partner.
A group of 10 students, along with English professor Kathleen Parrish, worked, lived and learned at La Gran Vista, a farm run by Donald Villalobos and his wife. Throughout the week, Villalobos taught students about composting, building terraces, working with livestock and more.
“We collected microorganisms and then we fed them,” said Grace Brokenshire ’24, a group leader for the trip. “We did a day of real composting with the molasses … It was a terrace farm, which is to prevent soil erosion.”
“Part of La Gran Vista’s mission is having visitors, so one of the days we spent the morning just painting and fixing up around the house,” added Charlotte Vierling ‘24, a student leader. “There were also a lot of opportunities to cook and interact with Donald’s wonderful wife.”
During their free time, the group went on walks, visited the local convenience store, explored a local town and went swimming in the river.
Many students on the trip found their time at La Gran Vista to be a rewarding experience with takeaways that they hope to apply to their own studies at Lafayette.
“My thesis is on industrial hemp, which is the cousin of cannabis that doesn’t produce any psychoactive effects,” Vierling said. “Because it’s really effective at sequestering carbon out of the atmosphere and taking pollutants out of the soil and water, I was able to talk to Donald about if he’s heard about hemp or where hemp could be implemented on the farm and talk a little bit about some of the benefits and costs of cultivating it.”
“I know for me personally a lot of the systems were simplified versions of what I study here, so that was very cool to see what we’re learning about that seems so inaccessible to the average person … has been simplified to be used on a small farm,” Brokenshire said.
The trip also inspired students to think differently about their postgraduate plans. Mia Day ’24, an environmental studies major and participant on the trip, took away a lot about working in a community.
“I would want to get involved with more community-level organizations because he was a small-scale farmer, it was a family-run business and I found what he was doing really inspiring,” Day said in reference to Villalobos. “I think getting involved in smaller scale or community-led organizations with a sustainability focus is something that I would be interested in in the future.”
Brokenshire, Vierling and Day all recommended that underclassmen consider joining Alternative School Break in the future.
“I feel like it was such a great learning experience,” Day said. “I think that a lot of these programs you think of just going in and doing community service or you’re helping other people, but ASB really has a focus of education and partnership with the community rather than a saviorism perspective.”
