Last year’s student volunteers to Pleasant Point

NerdScholar, a division of the personal finance website NerdWallet, has called Bowdoin’s spring break trip to the Passamaquoddy reservation one of the best school-sponsored alternative spring break programs that colleges have to offer. “We imagine that these trips are an unforgettable week of campus,” NerdScholar’s Paige Schaefer writes.

Bowdoin’s trip, “Learning and Living with the Passamaquoddy,” is fully financed by the president’s office as part of the Bowdoin-Colby-Bates Wabanaki Collaborative. Bowdoin’s alternative spring break programs are run out of the McKeen Center.

The trip to Pleasant Point takes place during March vacation, and is organized and run by two student leaders. Students volunteer at the Beatrice Rafferty School, which incorporates Passamaquoddy culture and history into its lesson plans.

In addition to helping in the classroom, students interact with community members. “Overall,” said Destiny Guerrero, a 2013 trip participant who will attend again this year, “the students get to see just how far resilience, pride and culture can take a people.”