Cancun or Camden?

Ten TCNJ students spent their Spring Break volunteering in one of the poorest and most dangerous cities in America rather than partying in a tropical location. One of them explains why.

Words by TCNJ's editorial staff

by Ashley Marie Polhemus ’13

In the days leading up to spring break, I began to pack my bags. Not with bathing suits and cute outfits like many expected, but with old jeans, ratty shoes, and T-shirts. I was asked, as were the group of nine TCNJ students that I went with, “Why on earth would you go to Camden for spring break? Why not somewhere fun?” I always shrugged my shoulders and answered, “It seemed like a good thing to do.” So I packed my bags and drove to Urban Promise Ministries in one of the poorest and most dangerous cities in America.

Urban Promise is an international non-profit organization that started in Camden, NJ, to help kids growing up in an urban environment. It started 23 years ago with one after-school program, but now the Camden site has a 1st–8th grade school, a high school, teen employment opportunities, and five after-school programs. Urban Promise currently has sites in various cities in the US, Canada, Honduras, and Malawi.

As a work crew, the TCNJ group worked around the Urban Promise main campus in the mornings, demolishing a floor and a ceiling, gardening, organizing school supplies, and washing school buses. In the afternoons, we went to the after-school programs and helped with the kids’ “Olympic Games.” These games included curling with frozen chickens, a dance off, eating a live goldfish, and a massive game of capture the flag.

However, the work group program at Urban Promise was not just an opportunity for community service. A large part of the program consisted of showing the city of Camden to the College students and explaining the problems within it. The goal of the program was to expose us to a world much different from our own—one that we had a hard time imagining before the trip. As we toured Camden in a school bus, we saw many dilapidated, abandoned buildings in the middle of busy neighborhoods (Camden has around 4,000 abandoned homes). We visited a park where all of the children in the Urban Promise program played, which was located right next to Camden County’s sewage treatment facility. On any given summer day, that facility causes Camden’s Waterfront South neighborhood to reek of sewage. On some rainy days, that sewage is released into the river, and often floods peoples’ homes.

Our trip to Camden certainly opened our eyes to a world of crisis that many of the students at TCNJ have never known. In spite of this revelation, however, those of us who went on the trip were moved by the life and hope that still survives in the broken city. The children we worked with were never hesitant to laugh and play, or even dance if any music was heard. These children were still innocents in a city that threatened them every day. Looking back on the trip, I hope that somehow, even in the tiniest way, I made a difference in those children’s lives, because I am certain that they made a difference in mine. They taught me that even the smallest actions and the most menial jobs can make a difference, even if you cannot see any immediate results. If individual people come together, they can begin to change peoples’ lives, like Urban Promise and its workers are doing in Camden and around the world.