A Spring Break to Build Upon
This spring break, a group of Tufts students took a formative and inspiring trip to help build homes in Hawaii for those displaced by natural disasters.
From March 14 to March 22, 30 students traveled on the Jumbo Spring Break trip to Lahaina in Maui, where they spent five days volunteering with Habitat for Humanity, assisting with everything from painting and putting up drywall to drilling and pulling weeds.
The main house the group worked on was for Lacy, a woman whose home, originally built by Habitat for Humanity, was destroyed by wildfires in 2023.
Lacy has been separated from her four children because of the housing situation, and students said she’s eager to have her family back under one roof as soon as possible. Lacy worked on the house with the students with the construction crew, as part of Habitat for Humanity’s sweat equity program.
First-year mathematics graduate student Rachel Villafranca said she appreciated working alongside Lacy and learning from her during the rebuilding process.
“It showed a lot of Lacy's heart and her grit,” Villafranca said. “We became a support system, in a sense, for those few days that we were helping her to remind her that she’s not alone, and that her community is not only the people around in Maui or in Lahaina, we’re all over.”
The students learned that Hawaii is experiencing a housing affordability crisis, which was exacerbated by the 2023 wildfires.
“Housing is something we often take for granted,” said Willow Locke, A27. “If you don’t have stable housing, you can’t really focus on anything else, like education and relationships. It is a core human right to have stable housing and our ability to contribute to that in any way is significant.”
Freydy German, A28, said everyone’s individual effort in helping build the homes showed the impact small acts can have on people’s lives.
“We may not have finished the house, but we definitely got the engines running so that [Lacy] can get her house back quite sooner than she expected,” German said. “With a bunch of little hands, a really big project came out of this.”
Students were not expected to come on the trip with any prior construction experience and they learned by doing, with local workers guiding them. When they left the site, they stayed at a hostel and cooked for themselves.
It was crucial this trip wasn’t for the sake of taking vacation, Associate Dean of Students Kevin Kraft said.
“We’ve been really intentional about the way we structure this trip to fit into the mold of regenerative tourism, literally regenerating a house,” he said.
The cost of the trip was $3,400 per person, which included airfare, lodging, meals, and all of the experiences and excursions. Fundraising efforts helped grant 50% discounts to some students with the highest level of financial need. Kraft said he hopes the trip can be free to all students in future years if additional funding is secured.
Villafranca said the trip humbled her. It wasn’t lost on her that the construction crew the students worked alongside may have lost their own homes or known people who had.
“The fires happened three years ago, but people are still feeling it,” she said. “When we went there, we could still feel the grief and some of the heaviness, and yet, those same people still welcomed us into their homeland and were the biggest displays of gratefulness and hope.”
Natural disasters are a constant threat to the island. As the students arrived, Hawaii was hit with some of the worst floods Hawaii had seen in two decades.
Biopsychology student Dahlia Diaz, A27, said the students and the construction crews got through rough weather days.
“All of the world’s rain was coming down on us, but everyone was so eager,” Diaz said.
This was Diaz’s second Jumbo Spring Break trip, and she credits the experiences, even the difficult parts, with drawing her even more to community service.
“Sometimes it turns out to be such grueling work and it feels like there’s still so much to do,” she said. “It’s a test of patience, resilience, and strength. Working with someone shows their true nature, and I feel like I saw a lot of the beauty in a lot of the folks who I was working with because of how much we had to overcome.”
