The Adventure Begins!

To many UT students, Knoxville is a home away from home. Often times people desire to do service and help in other locations that they forget the problems that exist in their own community.  Knoxville has been pegged as a “top ten growing city,” but despite this classification Knoxville has a large homeless populations. 

This knowledge led us my partner Nidhi Shah and I to choose Knoxville, TN as our location for our Alternative Fall Break Trip. We chose the trip theme of "Hunger and Homelessness" because we were passionate about those social issues and they exist in abundance in Knoxville. Our mission is to act as servant leaders to provide an eye-opening and interactive experience for a diverse group of students and to lead them to understand and become knowledgeable about underlying issues of hunger and homelessness in their own “backyard” or community.  

After planning trip logistics, we had to choose a group of passionate students committed to our chosen social issues. The 12 students we selected are everything we could have hoped for--positive, passionate, and dedicated to serving their local community. Just look at their smiling faces after our pre-trip dinner at Tupelo Honey!

Tomorrow, at 7:30 am, the "Hometown Heroes" will take on Knoxville! Stay tuned for updates throughout the break from trip participants themselves!

Laura Galloway