UNB students put spin on spring break

Seventeen students from the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton will be in the area over the weekend as part of an alternative spring break.

The students, who are enrolled in Renaissance College, the university’s leadership school, were expected to reach Salem, Mass., on Tuesday where they will complete a service learning project, said Meredith Eaton, an AmeriCorps VISTA member at the United Way of Eastern Maine. The students will stop Friday night and participate in a mock emergency sheltering drill at the Brewer Auditorium.

On Saturday, the students and three faculty will meet at the University of Maine in Orono to help prepare the University Park for tree planting, while a small group will complete a painting job at the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine in Bangor. Once the projects are complete, the students will have lunch with past and present AmeriCorps members, UM students and members of the Maine Commission for Community Service.

“They don’t have a national service program like we do,” said Eaton. “They are very interested in finding out what we do and interested in shaping public policy in Canada while encouraging community engagement.”

The students are active university students who take classes in leadership, public policy and community problem-solving, Eaton said.

Maryalice Crofton, executive director for MCCS, said community service and nonprofit organizations were topics of discussion in the 2005 Canadian Maine Symposium. At the time she met Rick Hutchins, the UNB faculty member in charge of this week’s trip. She said Hutchins hopes the trip will help his students learn more about themselves and the effects of their service in the community.

During the symposium, Crofton said she learned that the relationship between nonprofit agencies and the government is very different in Canada. In the U.S., nonprofits use government and privately donated funds, while in Canada nearly all nonprofits are government funded, she said.

“In Canada … [nonprofits are] almost completely government funded and they are very interested in how the nonprofit sector engages for-profit funding support,” Crofton said.

The MCCS “wants to continue the relationship between the commission and any partners we might discover that will work out, not only in the state and other states, but across the border.”

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