KU students travel to Colorado for Alternative Winter Breaks

Group of smiling students wearing hard hats and winter jackets, standing with homes and mountains in the background.

KU students volunteered with three agencies, including Pikes Peak Habitat for Humanity, during the winter 2026 Alternative Breaks service trip in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Credit: Center for Service Learning

Tue, 02/03/2026

Gavin Wasmuth, Kate Kemper

LAWRENCE — in January 2026, University of Kansas students spent their last week of winter break traveling and volunteering with Alternative Breaks in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Established in 1995, KU Alternative Breaks is a student organization that “provides immersive volunteer experiences that educate students and foster a lifelong commitment to service.” Eighteen Jayhawks served with with Pikes Peak Habitat for Humanity, Pikes Peak United Way and Food to Power. The students also explored the city of Colorado Springs in their free time.

Pikes Peak Habitat for Humanity builds and repairs safe and affordable housing, strengthening neighborhoods and communities. Alternative Breaks volunteers supported this mission by helping install beams and drywall, moving metal sheeting and painting fencing.

Wearing hard hats, a trio of students help install wooden beams outside a small home for Pikes Peak Habitat for Humanity.

Pikes Peak United Way partners with local nonprofits to ensure access to shelter, learning and solutions to food insecurity. Trip participants assembled emergency food bags and designated a space for a community closet, which will serve as a free clothing, food and home necessities resource for families in need.

KU students are shown with assembled food bags for families in need in Colorado Springs.

Food to Power serves the Greater Colorado Springs area by distributing healthy surplus food from supermarkets, providing produce grown in Food to Power’s urban garden and managing a local composting program. In the urban garden, student volunteers harvested food, spread soil and fertilizer for future planting, and assisted in maintaining composting resources.

KU students work in a greenhouse for the Colorado Springs Food to Power program.

Alternative Breaks is a student-led program funded by Student Senate and is also often supported by university programs such as Hawk Link, the Center for Educational Opportunity Programs and others. To earn course credit for the break experience, AB participants have the option to enroll in UNIV 492, a special projects course taught by the Center for Service Learning.

"In the past three years, I have had the absolute pleasure of engaging with dozens of people, learning their life stories, how they have found a meaningful way to give back in the world, and been able to witness them forge lifelong connections with people they never would've met without Alternative Breaks,” said Sarah McCoy, KU AB’s executive director. “Alternative Breaks has pushed me out of my comfort zone, challenged my conceptions of the world and helped folks center service in their lives in a way they wouldn't have been able to without it. I can only hope that other Jayhawks will give themselves the same chance to meet such entertaining, incredible and kind people by signing up for an Alternative Break."

Learn more about KU Alternative Breaks by visiting the AB website.