As a Catholic college in the Lasallian tradition, Manhattan College emphasizes the importance of service. While there are many ways to serve your community and the world, one of the most popular at MC are the Lasallian Outreach Volunteer Experience (LOVE) trips. Students have traveled all throughout the globe, from Arizona to Montana to Haiti, in order to serve and immerse themselves in a culture unlike their own. Students return from these trips enlightened and inspired but their experiences have a price, often a somewhat hefty one. LOVE trips can cost anywhere from under $1000 to $3000, a significant amount of money that unfortunately cannot be covered with Jasper dollars. Fortunately, students are encouraged to fundraise with their trip’s groups and are able to cover some (in some cases, all) of their trip’s cost. Most MC students have donated to LOVE trips in some way whether it be buying a milkshake on the quad or attending a dinner dance in Thomas. While LOVE events are often fun for the participants, they require a lot of time and effort on the part of the students fundraising.
Last year Chris Hoey traveled to Jamaica as a freshman and was so transformed by the experience that he will be participating in another LOVE TRIP, this time to El Salvador. The trip, which will take place over Manhattan’s spring break, costs approximately $1500 per student. Chris shared that most students fundraise with the goal of covering about half of that, the rest they cover themselves.According to Chris “For spring break trips, we only have the first half of spring semester to fundraise on campus, however personally, we can start fundraising as early as Thanksgiving break.”
LOVE El Salvador has planned at least 10 different fundraising events for the spring semester, including “a midterms week destress late night breakfast, a volleyball tournament, and various raffles.” Besides group fundraising, students can fundraise on their own. Chris, like many students, relies on social media to reach out to friends and family in order to inform them of his trip’s mission and ask for donations. Potential donors can donate directly through the Manhattan College website, which is convenient for the donor and allows the student to keep track of the money they have raised.
Junior Aleysha Taveras will be heading to New Orleans, Lousiana during January Intersession to help those affected by Hurricane Katrina. Her group has strived to raise as much money for the trip as possible with “outside the box” fundraising.”We have done a lot of really different things such as an event on the quad where students paid to pie someone in the face. That raised us about $300″ She shared. In addition, LOVE NOLA held a Mario Super Smash Brothers tournament where students paid $5 to come and play against their peers.
She revealed that her group spearheaded the new MC fundraising trend of delivering food to students in their dorms. “We have delivered grilled cheeses and walked through the academic buildings to sell empanadas. We also went door to door, selling pie to faculty members in their offices.”
Despite their creativity, the group has faced some opposition in their fundraising attempts which Aleysha says makes the process all the more time consuming. “We’ve had to find ways around Gourmet Dining Services because they won’t let us sell in the Raymond Kelly Commons anymore; it’s seen as competition with the food vendors there. It’s really difficult especially because on many other campuses you can fundraise anywhere and not being able to utilize the Commons really decreases the amount of students we can reach.”
The students traveling to New Orleans haven’t let their obstacles get in the way of their success and will continue to fundraise up until they leave.
For anybody interested in donating to any of these trips, check out Manhattan College’s website!
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Manhattan chapter.