Happy Thanksgiving!

Hi everyone!

I hope all of you have escaped our dreary college campus by now and are cozy back home. Besides taking a little break from all of the schoolwork you have (hopefully you are able to...), the time off also gives us all a chance to collect more food for our "No Hunger November" campaign!

Once again, our end goal is to donate as much canned food as possible to the Capital Area Food Bank - the largest hunger and nutrition education resource in our area. You have until December 1 - that day, we'll gather all our food before we go out to D.C. for one last meeting this semester over dinner.

You should all have started collecting with your partners, but just in case, here's an updated list of the "most wanted items" for our food drive:

• Canned Fruits
• Canned Vegetables
• Multigrain Cereals
• Grains
• Canned Proteins
• Soups
• 100% Juice
• Condiments
• Snacks
• Baking Goods
• Hygiene Items
• Paper Products and Household Items

Lastly, make sure to have a great Thanksgiving break and we'll see you soon!
Nick

Jesse Wu!

Hello everyone! Let's see, where to begin. Well, I'm Jesse and I'm a sophomore here at Maryland. I am currently doubling in Kinesiology and Art, but that might soon change. I'm from Potomac, MD in Montgomery County. Here at UMD, I'm semi-highly involved with many campus clubs and organizations, including AIGA, Men's Club Volleyball, and Intervarsity Christian Fellowship.  This is my first AB trip and I'm very excited! I've participated in service trips like this in high school and I can't wait to go on this one! One thing I want to get out of this trip is a heart for justice.  There's a lot of injustice in the world today and I want to have a desire to change that.  I hope this trip can help me in that area of my life.

Quick Activity: Poverty Budget

Now that you have read about a homeless family in D.C., understand your own values, are educated about government policies available to the poor and have completed a mock monthly budget through the interactive activity, you can complete your own poverty budget. 

Use this budget sheet template to first write down all of your monthly expenses in the first column for each category (it doesn't matter who pays for them). This would include your rent (even if someone else pays for it), food, schooling (if you or your parents are paying for it out of pocket), etc. The first column is how much you currently spend, the second column is how you would allocate $776 a month with a poverty budget and the third is how you would allocate $388 with an extreme poverty budget. 

After you complete it, write in the comments below about it. How did you allocate your money in the second and third column? How did it make you feel? Were your values challenged and how did you overcome that?

Poverty 101 Meeting Recap

On Nov. 15, we had a Poverty 101 meeting to explore government policies effecting poverty and understand the challenges associated with a small income.

Before the meeting, participants read this Washington Post article to understand how homelessness has affected a real D.C. family. They also completed a values "quiz" to understand their own values and put themselves in a position to make tough decisions during the meeting.

We opened the meeting with a little taste of what's to come in our trip. Last year's Alternative Breaks: Chicago trip created a great video that got us excited for our own trip. Thanks to those trip leaders and here is their great video:

I hope you all are as excited as I am for the trip! :)

We then went over government policies, including the history of welfare, the programs available today and welfare myths. 

Some myths include:

• Myth #1: Once on welfare, always on welfare
• Truth: Actually, half of the people on welfare move off of it within two years 
• Truth: You also can't be on welfare for more than 60 months in an entire lifetime 
• Myth #2: Women on welfare have more children for money
• Truth: It is widely known that you get more money through welfare if you have more children, but the money you get doesn't nearly pay for everything you need to take care of a child 
• Truth: Also, the odds of having children decrease as women stay on welfare 
• Myth #3: Most teen mothers turn to welfare
• Truth: 5 percent of women on welfare are teenagers 

To roll it all together and see how our values influence our choices, we went through an interactive activity together. I highly recommend doing it yourself and seeing how difficult it is to manage your values and have money to pay for life necessities. 

Go AB Chi-town! :)

AB Letter-a-Thon

On November 14, a bunch of AB-Chi-Towners got together and wrote letters to friends, family, old high school teachers, mentors, bosses, and anyone else we could think of at the first-ever Alternative Breaks Letter-a-Thon. From our trip, our staff adviser Nicole and myself were in attendance, as well as Syed, Jesse, Anne, and Meenu. There were some snacks and music, but they played Taylor Swift's "Never Ever Ever Ever Ever Ever Ever Ever Ever...", which ruined everything.

Alternative Break trip leaders and participants hard at work writing letters to family and friends- and look who made an appearance in the bottom left corner....

Even if you couldn't make it, we still HEAVILY encourage all of you to write to any acquaintances you may have - it is a great way to use connections to pay for part or all of your trip! Let us know if you need help crafting your letters!

Happy fundraising, and go AB Chi-town!

Anne :)

Hi, I'm Anne Wagner. I'm a freshman and I'm excited to get involved here at UMD! My intended major is Government and Politics, but I might double major with Economics. I'm from Rockville, Maryland in Montgomery County. This is my first experience with alternative breaks; however, I did a lot of service work in high school. At UMD I participate in the Lutheran Student Association, badminton club, and now Alternative Breaks :) I have been to Chicago before and it's an awesome city so I look forward to going back. When I went the first time, I only saw the tourist areas of the city. I hope to get a better understanding of how severe poverty is. It is easy to be distracted by the prosperous and thriving city, but through this trip I hope to help the people facing hardships that tourists don't always see. As a government and politics major, I am also interested in advocacy. Through this experience I hope to learn what poor people need the most and how I can spread the word about their situation.

No Hunger November

It's November, so you know what that means, right? It's "No Hunger November!" - our trip's canned food drive.

Here's how it works:

• Everyone on the trip will have a partner (see below)
• You and your partner will collect as much canned food as possible during November - you can ask your family during Thanksgiving, stand outside the Commons Shop and/or ask the organizations you are a member of - the possibilities are endless
• We will deliver the food to the Capital Area Food Bank on Dec. 1 before we go to D.C. for dinner 
• The pair who collects the most canned food will win a prize :)

Partner list:

• Sean and Mary
• Nahid and Betsy
• Megan and Anne
• Michelle and Alisha
• Nick and Jesse
• Susan and Caitlin
• Syed and Meenu
• Kaitlyn, Reshma, and Nicole

"No Hunger November" helpful hit #1: contact your partner as soon as possible and create a strategy