Creighton University

Creighton Center for Service and Justice

• Community Involvement
• Service and Justice Trips
  • Spring Break Service Trips
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  • Fall Break Service Trips (FBST)
• Ignatian Family Teach-In
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Host Sites (The Places We Go)

(Updates to come!)
People who welcome and supervise our students at our host sites become role models and mentors, educators and prophets, awakening in our students new possibilities of vocation, lifestyle and commitment to justice. We are very grateful for our wonderful, generous host site partners!

Homelessness in Omaha, Getting to know our Neighbors

As with all our half week trips, this is most definitely an immersion rather than a service trip. You are invited to experience the realities of homelessness and the care and advocacy offered right here in our own city. Live with the guests at our local community partner Siena/Francis House, which focuses on meeting basic needs and accompanying people along their recovery process. Ministry of presence is the primary component of this trip. A lot of time will be spent hearing the stories of the guests there in formal meetings and informal time spent in the day shelter and during meals. This trip is the 2nd half of the week, Wednesday-Saturday.

Migrants, Immigrants, and Latinos in Omaha

Pixan Ixim is a Guatemalan Mayan group in South Omaha who gathers weekly for prayer. They have formed a committee to work on adult education, human rights, and health both in Omaha and in Guatemala. Come serve and learn with these eager adults as they share their history, culture and committment to improve their community. Service may include tutoring English classes, GED; child care, homework club, and manual labor in and around the parish. Visiting local community agencies that serve the Latino population is also a hallmark of this trip.  This is the 1st half of the week, Friday-Wednesday.

Refugees and the Sudanese Community in Omaha

Working with a local community partner, Mercy Housing, students will learn about the realities of refugees in Omaha. Service opportunities will include cleaning around the facilities and tutoring at the homework club. Visits to local agencies will help students understand what conditions were like leaving refugee camps, what the process of resettlement is here in the U.S. and then what opportunities and challenges are here in Omaha to learn the language, culture and to find work and community involvement.

Want to go green for Break?
Uncovering Inconvenient Truths in Omaha

This four-day seminar will expose the participants to five different aspects of sustainability: transportation, water, food, energy, and waste/recycling.  Students will engage these topics through integrating hands-on experience with education by experts in the field of sustainability.  Students will attempt to live sustainably during the four-day seminar by walking, using public transportation, eating locally, reducing our use of water and energy through conservation, and creating little waste.  This inaugural sustainability seminar seeks to educate and engage Creighton students about these issues in order that we might begin to create a more sustainable community here at Creighton and beyond.  To learn what the Creighton community is already doing in regards to sustainability, check out the website.

Defense Industry, Sustainability and Homelessness, Can you Dig it?
The Trinity Catholic Worker House is located in a rural, agricultural area, near the middle of a city as big as Omaha. The neighborhood has recent immigrants as well as established families. Opulence and poverty exist side-by-side,  the nuclear weapons industry has record budgets, but it is under the scrutiny of a small but determined group of abolitionists, etc.  The Catholic Worker is a house of hospitality and offers food, showers, and laundry services to the poor in the community. Simplicity and organic farming are central components. Your service will be manual labor and accompaniment. (This community has a few cats, if you have allergies/dislikes)

The EXCEL program in Calhoun City, MS provides tutoring, GED classes, adult on-going learning classes, computer classes, and a number of support groups for various interests. EXCEL is a non-profit organization located in Okolona, which is still a very segregated community with high poverty and illiteracy rates.  The participants will have the opportunity to learn about the reality in those communities, as well as help in the tutoring program and the thrift shop run by EXCEL.

Get to know diverse communities in Chicago
Creighton will send two groups, one to St. Joseph’s Services and the other to  Marillac House. At St. Vincent De Paul Center all serve individuals who are economically disadvantaged. These sites serve very poor areas on the west side of Chicago with primarily African American and Latino populations. Students will work directly with the poor through help with tutoring and literacy (English as a Second Language), at a day care center, at a thrift store and with various agencies and programs.
Relevant Websites: Various Social Justice Issues; St. Vincent De Paul Center

Gentrification, Homelessness and Resistance
The Whitman House offers a week-long socioeconomic immersion/service experience in Cleveland, Ohio's near west side.  Students live as part of the Catholic Worker community, as well as part of the larger neighborhood community that is diverse economically, racially, and socially.  The experience includes volunteering with many different social services in the area and just getting to know the neighborhood and understanding its socioeconomic circumstances, especially the changes brought by gentrification in recent years.
Relevant Websites: Various Social Justice Issues; Catholic Worker

Variety of Direct Service in an Inner City
The staff, current volunteers and former volunteers of the Colorado Vincentian Volunteer (CVV) program will be our hosts. The area encompasses a diverse but economically poor community. Several Creighton graduates have spent a year as post-grad volunteers here so we know you will have a powerful experience. Service sites where CVV's work have included St. Francis homeless shelter, Broadway assistance center (food, clothes, rent), Neighborhood Partners (home-building, similar to Habitat for Humanity), a soup kitchen, sites that care for children of all ages, and many more. You will sleep and cook your meals at Casa Karibu, home of a Maryknoll Lay Missioner family who often hosts returned missioners on the first floor for ‘re-entry’ adjustment time. Social Justice and Catholic social thought ground the work of the volunteers in the CVV program and their reflections.
Relevant Websites: Various Social Justice Issues; CVV Home

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Students are invited to work with and learn from workers and guests at a local soup kitchen, thrift store and adult education center. Detroit has one of the nation's highest poverty and unemployment levels after many automobile factories closed. The Daughters of Charity that host the group will give an orientation of the community and spend time reflecting, sharing and eating with the group.

The Missionary Society of St. Columban Office of Advoacy and Outreach will host this trip. Focusing on border issues which include migration, land rights, economics, and sustainability. More information to come soon.

The St. Vincent's child care center serves 158 children 80% of whom live in poverty and 75% of whom are being raised by a single working adult. The are looking for  energetic and caring volunteers to help with infants, toddlers and preschoolers. There is also a need for housekeeping and grounds work.

Commitment to the Poor and Vulnerable in Indianapolis
The Daughters of Charity will welcome students into their powerful ministries in challenging, poor areas of Indianapolis.  Participants will work in a health clinic for the uninsured of Indianapolis. Students will also shadow social workers from St. Vincent New Hope Family Preservation. Each day, students will have the opportunity to serve a different population of the poor.

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Trying on a Post Grad Volunteer Program
One highlight of service trips to Milwaukee is the chance to eat with the guests of St. Ben’s Community Meal.  Students will spend a day at Repairers of the Breach, a drop in center that is organized and run by people who use the services they provide.  As a new element to the immersion trips, students will also have the opportunity to visit with Voces de la Frontera, an immigrant rights group that is working to bring about justice for immigrants.  There is also an opportunity to see an alternative to the current economic system by visiting Growing Power, an urban farm that emphasizes the economic and environmental impact of local food systems and sustainable agriculture.  Volunteers will visit and work at the local Catholic Worker house, which emphasizes direct service to the poor while simultaneously challenging war and the violence of poverty by taking direct action.
Relevant Websites: CapCorps

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You are invited to immerse yourself with the Annunciation Parish and learn about the innercity, multiethnic neighborhood. Visiting with different community and parish groups, students will hear the stories of immigrants, learn about hunger, visit shelters and distribution centers. This trip will focus on cross cultural understanding and dialogue rather than service work.

Resurrection Catholic Missions reaches out to the community around it.  Some of the things that you may do here include assisting in the child care center, working in Resurrection Catholic School (tutoring, P.E., reading, etc.), assisting with the elderly outreach program, or gardening.  The trip will also include learning and discussing the role of the civil rights in Montgomery.  For more information: http://www.rcmsouth.org

The EXCEL program in Morton, MS provides tutoring, GED classes, adult on-going learning classes, computer classes, and a number of support groups for various interests. EXCEL is a non-profit organization located in Okolona, which is still a very segregated community with high poverty and illiteracy rates.  The participants will have the opportunity to learn about the reality in those communities, as well as help in the tutoring program and the thrift shop run by EXCEL.

Participants will work with the Daughters of Charity and assist them in a variety of work they are involved with in Nashville. Students tutor at St. Vincent de Paul School, in the Ladies of Charity welfare office, and help with nursing in various settings including a women’s shelter, hospital, Catholic Charities Outreach, parish and local schools. Students will enjoy great hospitality in this very receptive and diverse community.
Relevant Websites: Various Social Justice Issues; Daughters of Charity;

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Begun as a non-violent, loving outreach in 1998 after the violence of the Oklahoma City bombing, this host site will allow students to “meet with poor people and dialogue with them about their situations and experiences” (host Robert Waldrop). Hosts are committed to simplicity, hospitality, non-violence and sustainable living. Students will participate in neighborhood outreach, community gardening and bread-baking while experiencing what it is like to live on a food-stamp budget of $3 a day.
(This community has a few cats, if you have allergies/dislikes)

Taking the next step: After going on a SBST to this site, Kelsey Wilhelm brought what she learned home with her and helped to start a garden at St. Vincent de Paul Parish, with all the food harvested donated to area homeless shelters. To read more about Kelsey's efforts and how her SBST affected her, read this article!

The EXCEL program in Okolona, MS provides tutoring, GED classes, adult on-going learning classes, computer classes, and a number of support groups for various interests. EXCEL is a non-profit organization located in Okolona, which is still a very segregated community with high poverty and illiteracy rates.  The participants will have the opportunity to learn about the reality in those communities, as well as help in the tutoring program and the thrift shop run by EXCEL.

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Any junior or senior conisdering volunteering with Red Cloud volunteers or another similar program is invited to apply for this trip. Living, volunteering and reflecting with the year long volunteers will give Creighton students an opportunity to put themselves in the volunteers' shoes as they discern a year of serivce.

Two recent articles on Innovative Summer Youth Programs at Pine Ridge with Jesuits who are friends of the CCSJ:

www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2009/08/28/news/religion/doc4a75b7b495662035588766.txt

http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2009/08/17/news/top/doc4a88f0b8115c0148963559.prt

This trip will travel to the Rosebud reservation in South Dakota.  The students will do physical work on the reservation and have the opportunity to meet the community while doing this work.  Speakers will be invited to meals to share with students about their lives.  The students will also spend time at a local elementary school.

Students will stay with the Gateway Vincentian Volunteers (recent college grads who are volunteering for a year). Students will go with current volunteers to a variety of sites in St. Louis, working with African American and Asian communities. Sites are dependent upon where volunteers have placements- may possibly include various city schools, a low-income daycare, a soup pantry, and an international immigration office. Other possible opportunities include getting a tour of East Saint Louis, visiting with a group of women recently released from prison, and contact with Catholic Worker communities.
"People are homeless, abused and looked down upon. Therefore, we need to have an open heart to learn and understand the injustices that are going on." This host site suggests reading the book Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol
Relevant Websites: Various Social Justice Issues; Vincentian Service Corps

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WoodsWorks is designed by the Sisters of Providence at the White Violet Eco-Center to introduce the principles of eco-justice and Providence Spirituality while engaging in service at and around Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, near Terre Haute, Indiana.  The service sites will alternate between the White Violet Center for Eco-Justice (includes organically certified farmland, orchards and gardens), Wabash Valley Habitat for Humanity, Educational/Family Services, Catholic Charities and St. Ann Clinic. ; maintenance in our organic gardens, assistance with daily alpaca care, work on our nature trail, working in landscaped areas near WVC buildings, and orchard maintenance.  We also need help with annual cleaning tasks such as cleaning alpaca pens and fans, cleaning and putting up bluebird boxes, alpaca fiber program, recycling and biomass program, cleaning, or playing games with sisters in the memory loss unit. 

More than Hammers and Nails
Do you know, or want to learn, how to build a house? Work with Stroud’s Habitat for Humanity chapter to complete a home for a family in this warm Oklahoma community. “Habitat for Humanity benefits the community as much as it does individual families. Habitat homes are well built by community members and our home owners are proud and responsible neighbors.” This town is still in the process of rebuilding after an F-5 tornado hit in the late 90s which wiped out their economic centers.

Travel the Thursday of midterms week to participate in the Ignatian Solidarity Network's spring teach-in focused on Susatinability. Then continue your experience with other ISN member schools on an Enviornmental Excursion hosted by the Appalachian Institute to learn about poverty, environmental degradation, coal mining and the health and history of the area.  

Life and Education on a Reservation, The Native American Experience
Experience life on the Reservation through meeting tribal leaders, visiting the schools, and participating in cultural experiences such as a sweat lodge.  You will also learn about the social issues.  The area is poor, though, because of gas and oil royalties perhaps not as poverty stricken as some reservations.  Addiction to alcohol and drugs and diabetes are the major health concerns on the reservation.  The students will meet with the elders who will speak to them about the issues on the reservation.
Most Arapaho are Catholic; most Shoshone who share the Wind River Reservation with them are Episcopal. We serve the Arapaho for the most part, who outnumber the Shoshone two to one. Each tribe has its own Business Council, comparable to a tribal council, and have some common agencies like the natural resources. Both Tribes have casinos, which, though providing jobs, cause social problems. The area is poor, though, because of gas and oil royalties perhaps not as poverty stricken as some reservations. Addiction to alcohol and drugs and diabetes are the major health concerns on the reservation. The students will meet with the elders who will speak to them about the issues on the reservation.
Relevant Websites: Various Social Justice Issues; St. Stephens Indian Reservation