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Amidst all the property damage and riots Ferguson Mo. has endured since the shooting of Michael Brown, some college students have used their Spring Breaks to help rebuild the community and promote civic engagement.
Ferguson Alternative Spring Break<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(FASB)<span style="color: Red;">*</span>is a five-week program created by civic leaders and activists from Ferguson, which invites students from across the nation to help rebuild the city by addressing unmet social needs. The program started on March 7 and will end on April 11.
Patricia Bynes, democratic committeewoman of Ferguson Township and co-founder of FASB, sends off students before door-to-door canvassing (Walbert Castillo/USA TODAY College)
Each week, students will spend approximately 33 hours partaking in a wide variety of community service projects, which include: voter education and registration, community beautification projects, food share collection and distribution, assisting local businesses who affected by city’s unrest and homework help and tutoring with local schools.
Students will also attend workshops that deal with social justice issues, which will be held at Webster University, located in downtown St. Louis.
Patricia Bynes, democratic committeewoman of Ferguson Township and co-founder of FASB, said she was inspired to create the program after speaking with Richard Rose, the president of the NAACP in Atlanta, GA., about students from Atlanta visiting Ferguson to raise awareness about voting and encourage civic engagement.
Afterward, Bynes said she contacted Charles Wade and Tasha Burton, co-founders of Operation Help or Hush, to work on the logistics of the project, which took approximately two weeks to complete.
Bynes said she wanted to make it clear to the city of Ferguson that this program was not in any means to protest but rather to focus on the individuals within the Ferguson community.
“I thought the program would be a great way to show the community that there are people, especially students, from all over the country who want to help empower them because the people in Ferguson do matter,” said Bynes.
Wade says they created a Tumblr page to reach out to students who were interested in being of service to the Ferguson community. After the web page went live, they received approximately 800 inquiries from students who were interested to take part in the program, he says.
Ferguson Alternative Spring Break participants engage in social justice workshop at Webster University (Walbert Castillo/USA TODAY College)
“When I came across Ferguson ASB, I knew that this was the kind of service I wanted to participate in because having followed the tragedy from the very beginning, I wanted to step out from behind the computer, where I had been posting and tweeting about it, and actually be a part of the community and see what the community needed and respond to a situation that I had only talked about,” said Samantha Nichols, senior at Missouri State University.
Knowing these students are willing to change the discourse from conversation to action, that alone is<span style="color: Red;">*</span>great accomplishment on its own, says Wade.
Sophie Bradburn,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>student<span style="color: Red;">*</span>at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, says she felt such a huge disconnect being far away and hearing about Ferguson from social media and the news.
“Talking to the people who were affected by everything that happened, the connection feels a lot closer and we can get a clearer idea of how to help them,” says Bradburn.
Priyanka Patel,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>manager<span style="color: Red;">*</span>of Ferguson Market & Liquor store, says it is very thoughtful of the students to spend their time during their spring breaks to assist the community when they could be doing something else.
During the first week of the program, Bynes said they focused their efforts on raising awareness about voting registration to the Ferguson and Dellwood communities since the deadline to vote was on Wednesday, March 11.
The fact that students are engaging the Ferguson community to start voting more is smart, says Ferguson resident Alka Hamilton. If enough citizens vote, the community can have better laws enforced, so history will not be doomed to repeat itself, she says.
“A community feels empowered when they can vote for the candidates that they want to vote for and hold those candidates accountable; I think that if people realize how powerful they are, they can make a change,” said Bynes.
While most students participating in the program are not from Ferguson, Wade says there are<span style="color: Red;">*</span>a handful of local students willing to partake in their efforts of empowering the community.
Brenna Whitehurst, junior at Webster University and a citizen of<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Ferguson, says other than being active in the protest, Ferguson ASB was an outlet for her to give back to her own community.
The people of Ferguson expressed their appreciation and shock when they discovered students traveled far distances to assist their community, Whitehurst says.
“These students are the cream of the crop in terms of active citizens and youth leaders on campus and in their community. We know they bring in a wealth of information and ideas to the area,” said Wade. “I think the presence of the students help lift moral to let people know they are a part of the community even from afar.”
Michael Brown memorial on the intersection of Canfield Drive and Caddiefield Road (Walbert Castillo/USA TODAY College)
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