Beyond the Yard- Feature Story

By Kelvin Childs

Howard University Alternative Spring Break (HUASB), a week-long experience in which Howard students travel around the country and even across the globe to do service acts in varied communities, celebrates 30 years in 2024.

This year’s HUASB takes place March 3—10 and the theme is “A Legacy of Paying it Forward: 30 Years of Service.” Instead of vacationing on the beach or relaxing in other ways, HUASB student volunteers pack boxes at food pantries, clean up neighborhoods, plant crops, talk to elementary and high school students about the value of historically Black colleges or universities, and much more.

The program has grown mightily since the first cohort of 12 Bison students went to Lumberton, North Carolina in 1994. This year, 2,100 students committed to serving, according to a tweet from HUASB on X, formerly known as Twitter.

That’s almost double the 1,200 who went in 2023. That group had 1,600 applicants, according to an NBC4 Washington report. They went to 25 sites in the contiguous United States including Chicago; El Paso, Texas; Louisville, Kentucky; Cleveland; Flint, Michigan; Detroit; Richmond, Virginia; the Bronx, New York; Charlotte, North Carolina; Newark, New Jersey; St. Louis, Missouri; and also to Puerto Rico and Accra, Ghana.

“When I started ASB many years ago I had no idea it would develop into this,” said the Rev. Dr. Bernard L. Richardson, dean of the historic Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel, as he addressed an assembly of students in 2023 at Crampton Auditorium before they left for their assignments.

The first Alternative Spring Break was at Vanderbilt University in 1987, according to “A Case Study on Alternative Spring Break: Supporting Black Women at an HBCU,” a June 2020 doctoral dissertation by Aeryel Williams of Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College.

HUASB partners with organizations in the areas it visits, like Community Service team of Bronx Community Solutions. During their week, the students cleaned up trash along the Bronx River Parkway, and distributed food and water in a giveaway sponsored by Sweet Chick restaurants. The cohort that went to El Paso, Texas, spent time at Jardin de Milagros planting crops and at its partner outfits, Mustard Seed Café, Kelly Center for Food Relief and El Pasoans Fighting Hunger, packing boxes of food for those two food banks’ clients.

Howard’s program is administered by the office of the Dean of the Chapel. Travel, food and lodging is free to the student volunteers, covered by fundraising, sponsorships and donations from supporters. Since 2005, WHUR 96.3-FM has hosted an annual 12-hour “WHUR Helping Hands Radiothon” in support of HUASB. Last year, students lined Georgia Avenue and Bryant Street with bright yellow “Helping Hands” picket signs and buckets collecting money and checks all day as listeners made pledges and donated through WHUR’s website, raising more than $106,000 according to the station.

For more information and updates on Alternative Spring Break, visit the website at https://chapel.howard.edu/huasb and follow on Instagram and X @huasb.