The Daily Tar Heel

Issue date: 2/12/08 Section: Features

Media Credit: Courtesy of Colleen Lindstrand UNC alumna Colleen Lindstrand worked at a Jacksonville, Fla., soup kitchen with a group from Newman Catholic Student Center last year.

While her roommates travel to Europe and the Bahamas, junior Michelle Lakeman will spend her Spring Break sleeping in a tent in rural Mississippi.

She said she's already had the "typical Spring Break experience" and is looking for something life-changing this year.

A nursing major, Lakeman is one of 23 aspiring health professionals from UNC heading south to help Hurricane Katrina victims get health care service.

The nursing school is one of several of the University's medical departments that will be lending their expertise during the break from classes.

The nursing students, accompanied by several UNC faculty, will work alongside health professionals in Pearlington, Miss., which still is recovering from the 2005 disaster.

"I was attracted to the idea of everyone working together - UNC students and professors and people of the community - to help bring back what Mississippi had lost during the hurricane," Lakeman said.

This is the third year a group of public health and nursing majors will go to the region.

"It was an amazing experience," said Natosha Anderson, who went on the trip last year. "The devastation that remains two years after Katrina is heartbreaking, but the communities are incredibly strong and united. It was inspiring to work alongside communities that are striving to serve one another."

The trip costs $100 for each participant, which covers all meals, housing in the tents and a chartered bus ride to Mississippi. They'll be the start of a new wave of help to the region.

Cheryll Lesneski, a professor in the School of Public Health and a faculty advisor for the trip, said that many aid volunteers will be leaving in March.

The UNC volunteers will be going door-to-door to 40 families who have been identified as still needing health care assistance, such as Medicaid.

The experiences have changed people's lives.

"This trip has been a life-transforming experience for some students who ... had not really been exposed to people who have to cope with the loss of homes, jobs and health insurance," said Sonda Oppewal, a professor in the School of Nursing.

The Pre-Dental Honor Society also is sending students out to do something other than sunbathing this March.

Fifteen members will work with dentists in Monte Cristi, Dominican Republic, to educate orphans about oral hygiene through a program with Orphan Outreach.

Senior biology major Chelsea Marcuard taught English through the same volunteer organization last Spring Break and wants more UNC students to have similar experiences.

"I felt that we all made a definite impact last Spring Break, which was apparent in the way the kids' faces lit up when they saw us," she said.

The desire to make an impact is why junior Lauren Hollowell, a biology major and aspiring dentist, is going on the trip.

"Trips like these leave you with the awesome feeling that you are making a difference."



Contact the Features Editor
at features@unc.edu.

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