Warm weather wasn’t the only thing Geneseo students were searching for this past spring break. Last month, 14 students set out for Kissimmee, Fla., to share their time and passion as part of an alternative spring break by volunteering at Give Kids The World (GKTW) Village.
The village serves as a home away from home to families who have a child with a life-threatening illness. Their week-long stay is an all-expense paid vacation, often through the Make A Wish Foundation, with many college students from across the country volunteering as workers for the GKTW organization.
David Parfitt, director of the Teaching & Learning Center and Institute for Community Well-Being, has led the trip since 2010. Each year there is more interest, and enhancements. For example, this year and in the future, participants receive a $250 merit scholarship from the Geneseo Student Association to defray expenses.
“Participation used to be on a first-come, first-serve basis,” said Parfitt, “but in March 2013, the trip had reached capacity just hours after the information session ended. That’s when I decided to go to an application process.”
This year, he received over 30 applications for a limited number of spots. Capacity is capped due to several factors, including bus transportation limitations, availability of volunteer positions in the village, and administrative constraints, since Parfitt is the only Geneseo faculty member providing on-site supervision.
“I’ve toyed with the idea of offering an alumni trip,” he said, given the affinity that past Geneseo volunteers have with Give Kids The World.
Parfitt’s side interest in travel writing led him to Florida numerous times. His love for travel, combined with his passion for service-learning, proved to be the winning combination behind the Geneseo program.
During one of his many trips, he learned of the GKTW program and decided to take his daughters, then 7 and 10, for a visit in December 2008 to “let them see how fortunate they were to experience the amount of traveling our family has enjoyed.”
Serendipitously, he connected with Geneseo alumna and then-GKTW employee Susan Storey ’96, who provided a tour of the village and expressed interest in student volunteers. Parfitt offered the GKTW alternative spring break for the first time in January 2010.
This year’s trip was co-led by Mary Panzetta ’18 and Stephanie Resila ’18, who also participated last year. Student volunteers stay in an off-site house a few miles away from the village and volunteer in several roles — serving families at meals, operating rides, dressing up for theme parties, and helping to clean at the end of the night. Every night is a different holiday that volunteers help support. For example, Monday might be Halloween when the children go trick-or-treating.
“It creates a sense of normalcy for the kids,” said Chris Cummins '18, a communication major who knows first-hand the challenges that families encounter when a health crisis strikes. His sister was a Wish child.
“Their weeks are usually filled with hospital visits and being hooked up to wires, and having the ability to give them normal experiences such as trick-or-treating is just incredible,” he said.
Shea Kinsella, a sophomore communication and sociology double major, visited the village in fifth grade when her younger brother made a Wish. Upon coming to Geneseo and hearing about the trip, she said she felt “she had to go.”
The tower of the castle is a prominent feature in the village. The ceiling and walls are covered in gold stars, with the names of every Wish child who has ever visited. The children make their star and then overnight, Stella the Star Fairy places it upon the ceiling.
“Working at the castle was my favorite shift because there was more one-on-one interaction with the children; you can have more of a conversation with them,” said Kinsella.
According to Parfitt, “GKTW kids” have to be healthy enough to travel, so volunteers don’t necessarily see children when they’re sick, but rather, while they’re “happy, healthy and having a blast.”
“The families are so appreciative of what is being done for them,” he noted. “For many, it’s the first time they’ve been able to take a vacation as a family, and they’ll often say, ‘I can’t believe you gave up your spring break to work.’ And our students say, ‘We’re not giving up anything — what we’re getting back is so much more than what we’re giving.’”
Geneseo volunteers were also able to relax on their off hours, including spending time by the pool, going to Discovery Cove, where participants swim with dolphins and see other marine life. This trip was made possible thanks to Storey, now director of communications for SeaWorld Parks & Resorts Orlando.
This year brought another welcome surprise: Geneseo alumna and Give Kids The World employee Emily Wagner ’14 was able to join the group. She serves as a communications representative. Wagner, who previously worked at Walt Disney World after earning her master’s degree in public relations at Syracuse University, has been with GKTW since May 2016.
“Geneseo has been one of the first schools to volunteer at Give Kids The World on an alternative spring break trip, and it was the only SUNY college down here this year,” she said. “Everyone here knows the name and the prestige of the Geneseo Give Kids The World program.”
Parfitt gives credit to the Geneseo students for their enthusiasm and commitment to the GKTW mission.
“The students come together very quickly as a tight-knit group,” he noted. “There’s not one student who’s gone on this trip that I wouldn’t take again — they are all hard workers and easy to travel with.”
Sharing a decade’s worth of perspective, Parfitt pauses before discussing what students get out of the trip.
“What I’ve seen over the past 10 years is that this experience gets the students outside of themselves — it really helps them get a broader perspective,” he said. “It’s easy for students to get narrowly focused on classes, papers and deadlines, but going down for a week and giving back to families who are struggling everyday with doctor appointments and medical expenses … they come back with a different sense of what it is that they deal with here at school. It just gives them a new perspective on life.”
Senior education major Cara Behrens agrees.
“There’s a chapel at the village where the families can go to pray and there’s a little book where they can write their prayers,” she said. “Reading through that book really put things in perspective. The Village is such a happy place but you don’t think about the families going home to very hard lives; it just makes you very grateful.”
For information on the 2018 Give Kids The World alternative spring break trip, contact Parfitt at parfittd@geneseo.edu. Read about the 2015 trip published by Huffington Post and view the 2017 trip photos.
— By Genna Amick ’18, Academic Affairs intern