College students seek out alternative spring break in Ferguson, Missouri

By Adam Saewitz

This March and April, about 200 college students from around the country met in Ferguson, Mo., to participate in an alternative spring break program. The program, which ran in single-week increments spanning five weeks through April 11, connected university students with local residents and activists who together helped clean up the city, run food drives and register voters. The project offered college students from around the U.S. a chance to discuss issues with community members and to address the needs of residents in the wake of the shooting death of Michael Brown by officer Darren Wilson in August 2014.

Residents of Ferguson, a city whose population hovers near 21,000, have been working tirelessly to rebuild community relations ever since the shooting. In March of this year, the Department of Justice’s investigative report on the Ferguson Police Department illuminated racist policing tactics and led to the resignations of the Ferguson police chief, the city manager and a judge. As the city shuffles its core members of local government, many, including the students in the Ferguson Alternative Spring Break program, want to help foster new energy and policy inside Ferguson’s borders.

After recognizing a lack of resources for residents, Ferguson Alternative Spring Break co-founder Charles Wade used social media to open the program to college students seeking an alternative to the beaches of Cancun or Miami and an opportunity to give back to those in need. Speaking to Yahoo News, Wade says, “When you get here, you meet the people, you realize how normal of a neighborhood this really was and just how traumatic the experience was, you really have a heart towards the situation and the people, and it’s hard to just leave.”

Wade, who came to Ferguson in August, has been in the trenches since arriving and is working with activists and local leaders to provide safe houses and meals and handle other logistics for residents needing assistance. Wade’s emphasis on community action is connecting local residents with new young faces. He says, “The reality is, most people don’t have empathy. They’re able to muster up sympathy, but empathy is very different. It requires you to do a little bit more work to see the commonality in our humanity.”