PAYING IT FORWARD: UND students spend spring break helping others

Taylor Brost, a UND senior from Sartell, Minn., is getting an education during spring break he'd never get in a classroom.

Unlike most college students who head for home or a sunny, warmer climate for break, he's working on community service projects, along with 120 other UND students who took off from campus by bus on Friday headed for cities around the nation.

The students are on the annual "Pay it Forward Tour," volunteering on community service projects and assisting charitable organizations.

"It's going really well," said Brost. "You meet lots of different people from different cultures and you feel really good about what you're doing."

One UND bus is headed for Washington, D.C., and two others for Dallas, Texas. Students in one of the Dallas-bound buses, the "mystery bus," did not know where they'd be making stops along the way.

The "Pay It Forward Tour" is sponsored by the Students Today Leaders Forever organization, founded in September 2003 by four University of Minnesota students in Minneapolis. The first tour was conducted in 2004. STLF has grown to 29 college chapters in 12 states.

During this spring-break season, about 1,550 college students around the country are filling 41 buses headed for final destinations in what the organization calls "celebration cities," said Irene Fernando, co-executive director and co-founder of STLF.

Each bus stops at five cities en route to the celebration city where it meets up with seven other buses, she said. In addition to Washington, D.C., and Dallas, other celebration cities are Denver, Colo., and Charleston, S.C.

Spreading good-deed seeds

Brost, whose bus ended up in Dallas on Wednesday, has made stops at Sioux City, Iowa; Lawrence, Kan.; East St. Louis, Ill.; Memphis, Tenn.; and Hot Springs, Ark.

So far, he's helped a camp for special-needs children get up and running in Sioux City, painted rain barrels and started plants germinating for planting around Lawrence and cleaned up a rehabilitation center in East St. Louis.

"While you're stopping in a bunch of cities, you're talking with a lot of people," Brost said. "You get a feel for the diversity."

He decided to take his first tour, in 2010 to New Orleans, "because I wanted to get more involved and I hadn't done a lot of volunteer work before that. I felt it would make me a well-rounded person," he said. "I wanted to be around people who had the same sort of interests."

Another bonus: It's a fun, cheap way to see a lot of places without spending a lot of money, he said.

Greater numbers, greater impact

"The cool thing is when you go to the celebration cities, you meet up with other buses," Brost said. "A lot of people get together and work on one big project. It's pretty cool to have that many kids come out and get so much done for so much good in just one day."

Another benefit of the tour is getting to know other students better.

"It's really nice for everyone to bond over doing something good for other people," said Brost, who's majoring in political science and communication.

"It's amazing how much, in a nine-day trip out of your life, you can help so many people while learning about yourself," he said. "It's not just a volunteering event that you do and then forget.

"You really do take something out of every trip and find something within yourself that changes your life."

The experience has influenced his future goals. After graduating this May, he said, "I really want to be involved and volunteer in whatever community I end up in."

The buses will return to UND on Saturday.