Spring break brings university's most popular annual service opportunity

Click here for more details on each trip.

 

More than 400 students, faculty, alumni and friends participated March 12-21 in Lipscomb University’s primary service opportunity of the year: spring break mission trips.

 

Lipscomb’s mission tradition has grown steadily each year for the past decade, recently, adding trips to the island of Nevis; Ontario, Canada; and Dallas/Fort Worth. A new trip for Lipscomb’s nursing students took them to Jellico, Tenn., an extremely low-income area where nursing students will hold health fairs for school-age children, support a local church with their teen program and addiction programs, and provide food and personal supplies for the church to distribute in the community.

 

While most American students were vacationing, 22 groups of Lipscomb students and friends were impacting 10 nations and six United States cities by providing free home construction, medical care, educational enhancement, Bible studies, food and clothes distribution and general encouragement.

 

Lipscomb students have traveled to the same orphanage in Ensenada, Mexico for the past 14 years. They have conducted a medical clinic in Honduras, handing out more than 6,000 prescriptions a year, for the past 13 years. Students have built a new Habitat for Humanity home in the Appalachian town of Robbins, Tenn., each year for the past 11 years.

 

Spring break mission trips are largely coordinated and carried out by students and faculty/staff who volunteer their time and oftentimes spend up to a year in advance working out the logistics.

  

Lipscomb’s spring break mission trips are a major component of the SALT Program, an academic service-learning program designed to enhance the educational experience of undergraduate students at Lipscomb University. In order to graduate, students must participate in 3-5 hours of service-learning, enroll in a service learning course and participate in a long-term service experience, such as a mission trip or internship.

 

This school year 39 mission trips will go out through Lipscomb Missions as more than 625 students, faculty/staff, alumni and friends of the University serve others in communities locally, across the country and around the world. Other locations for Lipscomb’s spring break missions trips include the Atlanta and New York City inner cities; Jamaica; Baja, Calif.; several small cities in England; Miami; Panama City, Fla.; Mexico; Guatemala; Honduras; and El Salvador.