Service Teams

Travel and serve

Service Teams allow you to use your winter, spring, and summer breaks to travel domestically and internationally to serve alongside community partners.

Our domestic service teams travel to Midwest sites for week-long service trips over winter and spring break. Learn more about Alternative Breaks

International teams travel to sites in Latin America or Sub-Saharan Africa for several weeks during the summer. Learn more about International Service teams (IST)


Make progress on our world’s toughest challenges

You will learn more about the grand challenges you care about most, see how those challenges look in various communities, and work with members of those communities to make progress. Areas of focus:

  • Access to education
  • Housing security
  • Environmental sustainability
  • Public health
  • Global food systems
  • Youth development
  • Systems of inequity

Our trips are student-led, so while you’re serving, you’re also building leadership skills. Students from all majors are welcome to participate.


Find where you fit

You will also learn about how to approach service in an ethical manner. What does it mean to be an outsider coming in for a short period of time to do service work? What are the unintended consequences of service work? What does it look like to organize a diverse group of people to all make progress on the same issue? These are just some of the larger questions you will have the opportunity to explore.