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Spring Break: Serving Rather than Sunning

You may think it would be a hard sell to get college
students to spend spring break working in the 5th ward,
but you would be wrong.

Rod Rice reports.

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It turns out the United Way of Greater Houston’s Alternative Spring Break is an option for dozens of young people.

“There are over 80 college students from many universities.”

Anna Babin is the local United Ways president and CEO.

She says those students will spend the week working on community gardens, repairing hurricane damaged homes, building ramps for seniors and helping to prepare taxes for low income residents.

Mitch Wasser from Phoenix sees this as better then a week in the sun.

“You know, I can go to the beach anytime, who knows when an opportunity like this will come up again.”

Wasser was with about a dozen others at a home on New Orleans Street to build a ramp to make the home more accessible.

Melissa Walters is from the University of Georgia.

“I didn’t even hesitate, I got the e-mail about this and I signed up right away.”

“Why?”

“Because I wanted the opportunity to serve. I wanted the opportunity to meet people and I wanted the opportunity to learn more about working at Deloitte and this just combined all those things.”

Deloitte Consulting is also an event sponsor and is picking up the tab for taking care of the students for the week.

And for the students it’s not just work and networking…

Allie Miller goes to Penn State.

“I had my first hot tamale.”