Alternative Breaks
The McKeen Center’s Alternative Spring Break (ASB) trips provide an opportunity for students to enhance their knowledge of significant social issues, to live and work in communities beyond Bowdoin, and to participate in a program of intensive public service. Through extended preparation, community immersion, and reflection, each ASB participant develops their identity as an active citizen capable of committing to a lifetime of engagement for social change.
Apply to be a trip leader and lead an ASB trip for 2026.
Application Process
Step 1: Each leader completes the Trip Leader Application, individually. Submit Step 1 before Step 2.
Step 2: Co-leaders complete the Trip Proposal Form, together, submitting one form per trip.
Deadline for Steps 1 & 2 is midnight on April 17th
Step 3: Accepted applications will have an interview the week of April 21st.
Contact Tim Wylie in the McKeen Center for the Common Good, with questions (t.wylie@bowdoin.edu).
How Bowdoin ASB Works
ASB trips are organized and led by students. ASB leader responsibilities include recruiting participants, developing participant seminars, coordinating with community partners, and leading the actual trip.
Leader Selection
ASB proposals and leader applications are reviewed each spring for the following year by a committee of students, faculty, and McKeen Center staff. Those leaders whose trips are selected receive support and training from the McKeen Center to plan and implement their ASB trips.
Leaders' Seminar
During the fall semester, ASB leaders participate in weekly leadership seminars facilitated by the staff of the McKeen Center. The seminars prepare leaders in how to organize and lead their trips and to help student participants examine the political, social, cultural, and economic aspects of the communities in which they will be living. Through this seminar, leaders develop their own seminar which they lead for their trip participants in the spring.
Participants' Seminar
Participants attend weekly pre-trip seminars to prepare them for their community experience. These meetings may include background and cultural information about the site, guest visits, reading assignments, film viewing, and team-building activities.
During and After the Trip
During the trip, students participate in meaningful educational and service activities, daily reflective sessions, and evening group activities. After returning to campus, students work together to educate the larger Bowdoin community about their issue area and experience.
Alternative Spring Break Trips 2024-2025
*NOTE - Students on financial aid do not pay to attend ASB trips*
USA Trips
Lessons from the Border in Southern Arizona
Cost $950
Description: Participants will examine immigration, justice, and humanitarian aid in the context of the US-Mexico borderlands. Through service and engagement with community organizations, local advocates, and migrants, students will gain insight into the realities of this region and the impacts of US immigration policies. Community partners include Tucson Samaritans and others that support immigrant populations.
Investigating Climate Change and Its Socio-Ecological Impacts in Miami, FL
Cost $750
Description: Participants will engage with local climate and conservation organizations focused on exploring climate change’s socio-ecological impact in southeastern Florida, including sea-level rise and hurricanes. Through direct volunteering and reflective discussions, participants will learn about the interconnectedness between human populations and ecological systems, exploring how climate change disrupts both, with a particular emphasis on how it disproportionately affects vulnerable communities, exacerbating inequalities in health, resources, and environmental stability. By working with community members and nonprofit organizations in Miami, this trip highlights the urgency of climate change, shedding light on its profound impacts and community conservation efforts.
Latino Migrant Health in New York Urban and Rural Spaces
Cost $500
Description: Our trip focuses on Latino migrant health in rural and urban settings. By traveling between NYC and Hudson Valley, we hope to speak to community organizations, healthcare providers, and work with populations in an effort to learn and promote Latino Health equity within these areas. The New York Presbyterien health system spans city to state and in working with the Weill Cornell, NYPH, Columbia, and Hudson Valley hospitals, our ASB participants will leave our trip with a better understanding of how urban and rural practices of medicine seek to best serve their incoming migrant patient populations.
International Trips
Education as Youth Empowerment in Guatemala
Cost $1000
Description: Participants will examine some of the complex factors contributing to youth development and education in Guatemala. Through engaging with local community organizations, students will develop a deeper understanding of how education can have a lifelong impact on individuals and their communities through learning, jobs, and wellbeing. One of the groups we will work with is Safe Passage, a school which works to break the cycle of poverty for children and their families living near the Guatemala City garbage dump.
Resilient Communities Through Music and Environmental Conservation in Belize
Cost $1000
Description: How did people’s relationship to the arts and the environment change over history? How are societies today embracing or rejecting values of its history and creating new conceptions of these relationships? Participants will examine the history of Belize and how different cultures engaged in these questions. The trip will focus on engaging with organizations that promote community-led traditional and contemporary music-making, and ones that focus on environmental conservation efforts aimed at preserving Belize’s rich biodiversity.