From the Shenandoah to South Dakota

I am a full-time marketing program coordinator for James Madison University and part-time graduate student living in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

From March 7 to March 14, I served as the learning partner for a group of 10 undergrads on an Alternative Spring Break trip. We lived and worked on the Oglala Lakota reservation in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, which each time a census is taken, vies with its neighboring counties for the dubious title of "poorest area in the United States."

It was a perspective-changing experience in which every one of us received more than we were able to give to the Lakota people and staff at Re-Member, the non-profit organization working with the Lakota to address the reservation's housing crisis.

This is my blog, including entries taken from my travel journal during the trip and my observations after re-entering society.