Hammers, work boots, overalls and canned foods.
As the countdown to spring break begins, students are compiling lists of what they will need - but, for some, those lists might be a bit different than what you would expect.
Come spring break, beginning on March 5, over 100 students will visit a panoply of locales, where they will participate in a wide range of community-service activities, including rebuilding houses and cleaning up landscapes.
Campus groups, like Alternate Spring Break - a national, student-run organization - Hillel and the Newman Center, are sponsoring charitable trips to a wide range of locations, like Buenos Aires and the Chesapeake Bay.
Students who want to go on an ASB-sponsored trip apply in the fall, said Wharton senior Yan Ling, an ASB board member, who added that about 98 Penn students will be participating in one of the seven trips offered by ASB. This number is double that of last year, she added, when most were eager to partake in Katrina-related relief efforts.
This year's ASB trips are also a bit more varied.
Some of their trips this year include ones run in conjunction with Habitat for Humanity and ones in which participants work in the Everglades to remove hurricane debris.
And ASB is not the only organization planning spring breaks with a higher purpose.
Hillel is sending 19 students and two staff members to Buenos Aries, where participants will be doing charity work and meeting with community leaders.
The group will work to refurbish a school that was combined from two schools, so that neither would have to collapse due to financial constraints, said Wharton sophomore Jack Cohen, the trip's fundraising chair.
And College freshman J.J. Katz says he is excited about participating in this trip.
"I wanted to do something meaningful with my spring break," he said, calling the program a special opportunity.
And, for some participants, Penn's ASB offerings are a bigger than one might initially think.
Like College freshman and ASB member Daniella Mak, who said Penn's charitable programs are one of the reasons she ultimately decided to attend the University.
Last year, Mak flew to Sri Lanka with a group of high-school students helping relieve victims of the tsunami that occurred on Dec. 26, 2004.
"When I heard a bunch of Penn students also went, I wanted to apply [to the University] because I thought they'd understand me," Mak said.
This spring break, Mak is going on an ASB trip to San Juan, Texas, to work with immigrant farmers as they work to mobilize for political advocacy.
And the trips' itineraries still leave room for more-relaxing activities, like horseback riding and swimming.
The Newman Center also offers community-service-based spring-break trips, and other campus hubs, like Civic House and Grace Covenant, direct students looking for these sorts of trips to ASB.
