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One hundred Hamilton students are spending a week of their spring break volunteering at nonprofit organizations during Spring Break, March 12-26. This year marks Hamilton's 18th Alternative Spring Break (ASB), an annual volunteer venture that consists of 10 different community service trips.

On an Alternative Spring Break trip last year, Alysha Banerji ’11 was working with first-graders at a school in North Carolina when one of them proclaimed that his cat had just birthed kittens. The boy asked if Banerji wanted one, but when she told him that pets weren’t allowed in college dorms, he exclaimed, “I want to go to college!”

The men’s basketball team paid a visit to the House of the Good Shepherd in Utica on Jan. 24 for a friendly game with about 45 residents. The House of the Good Shepherd is a comprehensive human service agency that provides treatment to children and families who are struggling with serious emotional, social and behavioral problems. It provides care to more than 360 children from infant to 21-years-old. The Hamilton players hung out with residents and played a few games of basketball.

On Saturday, Jan. 22, more than 120 students gathered for Hamilton’s 13th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Service Day. The community service event, run by the Hamilton Association for Volunteering, Outreach and Charity, or HAVOC, sent students to a wide variety of locations across the Utica area, from the Kirkland Town Library to Lutheran Home for the elderly to the Rome Humane Society.

Hamilton community service programs HAVOC and COOP collected food, gifts and other items to make the holidays a bit happier for some local families in need.

Hamilton was well represented at the annual Utica Marsh clean-up on April 26. The Hamilton contingent focused on one part of the marsh, that near Dousharm Ave. The group collected many bags of trash and even found and moved an abandoned boat.

Steve Culbertson ‘79, president and chief executive officer of Youth Service America, contributed an article to The Huffington Post about Global Youth Service Day (April 23-25). According to Culberston “GYSD is the largest service event in the world, and it's the only day of service that specifically celebrates how young people, ages 5-25, are addressing critical issues such as health, education, human service, human rights and the environment.”

Steve Talevi ’79, P’10 and his wife Jacqueline opened their home to a group of Hamilton students on an Alternative Spring Break trip in March. The students, who volunteered at Habitat for Humanity in Mississippi, spent a night at the Talevi’s home in Roanoke, Va., as a halfway point on their way back to campus. The ASB group included Jennifer Talevi ’10.

A group of eight Hamilton students on an Alternative Spring Break volunteer trip to Mullins, S.C., were featured in a news article on the SC Now Web site (3/25/10). They're building a house as part of the Habitat for Humanity Collegiate Challenge.

A group of nine Hamilton students traveled to Burgaw Elementary School near Wilmington, N.C., on their Alternative Spring Break trip, March 21-27. Through this outreach program, they’re helping students with homework and participating in after-school activities. Students on the trip are Trang Nyugen '13, Jennifer Hightower '12, Kristen Scherb '13, Spencer Gulbronson '12, Clare Browne '12, Joelle  Adler '13, Meghan Woolley '13, Ada Horne '13, and Meghan Carter '12. They were featured on Burgaw's school Web site.