Trip Descriptions

For 2023 Spring immersions, all programming (including travel) is scheduled for Spring Break, Saturday, March 4th – Saturday, March 11th. We are expecting immersion to be in-person. Please note that some trips may fly, some may travel by car, and one immersion requires a passport for global travel.

There are NO participant fees or fundraising requirements. Participants are now eligible to apply their Federal Work-Study award to the ABP participant position (please note that you may only hold one FWS position at a time).

Please read below for more information about each of our four immersions.

Magis GU272+

• Location: DC, Maryland, and Louisiana (flying to Louisiana)
• Primary themes: enslavement, reparations, GU272+
• Description: Our vision for the immersion is to engage the institution of Georgetown in an open process that enables dialogue, reflection, community building, and tangible change for those who have been victimized by Georgetown’s settler colonial practices throughout history. We plan to engage with Descendant communities in our trip through D.C., Maryland, and Louisiana so that their diverse voices can be heard on a personal level, emphasizing resilience and agency throughout the process. Reparations, community engagement, and testimony are all priorities of our immersion which we hope will lead to restoration, transformation, and justice.

Borderlinks Border Immersion

• Location: Nogales, AZ and Nogales, Sonora, Mexico (flying to Arizona; passport required for border crossing)
• Primary theme: migrant justice
• Description: Borderlinks Immersion strives to build participants’ understanding of immigration and intersecting issues. Through interactions with a wide range of stakeholders in the Arizona-Mexico border region, participants will learn about the structures that shape migration and gain a firsthand look at different sides and stages of the issue. By engaging in dialogue with migrants, faith leaders, advocacy groups, direct service providers, and law enforcement, we will attempt to humanize the issue, escape reductive stereotypes and misconceptions, and address biases.The Jesuit values of inter-religious understanding, faith and justice, community in diversity, and contemplation in action will guide our efforts to understand the systems that shape migration, the motivations for migration, the experience of migration, and the challenges faced by migrants in the United States. Ultimately, the Borderlinks Immersion aims to facilitate a sustained commitment to education, activism, and solidarity with the migrant justice movement in our communities on the Hilltop, in DC, and around the country.

Spring Break in Appalachia: Mountain Environmental Justice

• Location: Harlan, KY
• Primary theme: environmental justice
• Description: SBIA participants will engage with residents of Harlan, Kentucky in order to learn how the United States’ declining coal industry has affected Appalachia’s economy, and in turn, its local lifestyle. Through this immersion, we hope to gain a deeper appreciation for the region’s coal culture (the cultural habits that develop in coal-dependent communities) and examine how transitioning toward a “green” economy affects this culture through the issues of gender, race, age, and art. Throughout the immersion, we will work closely with many community partners that focus on a variety of community building, environmentally driven topics. These include long-standing community partner COAP Inc., a nonprofit that builds environmentally friendly homes in Harlan, a trip to Portal 31 to learn more about the history of coal mining in the region, community centers like AppalShop and more. These topics have proven especially relevant since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has widened disparities in the area and strained relationships with the environment. Our primary objectives are to return to Georgetown with a greater sense of empathy for those affected by the declining coal industry, a personal reconciliation between coal economies and the environment, and an appreciation for the Appalachian mountain culture that binds communities together.

Worker Justice DC

• Location: Washington, DC
• Primary theme: worker/labor justice
• Description: Worker Justice DC, in partnership with the Kalmanovitz Initiative (KI), seeks to gain a holistic understanding of worker’s justice through an intersectional lens (both identities and issues). We will investigate a multitude of injustices workers face with the goal of creating relationships of solidarity with community partners, while actively working to acknowledge how our own identities and background influence our work. By being conscious of the populations who are marginalized in this work and working to be as knowledgeable as possible about this issue, we will strive to fulfill our goals of solidarity with these communities. It is essential to situate this topic within the broader context of intersecting issues: housing justice, food scarcity, access to healthcare, mass incarceration/prison labor, undervaluing of domestic work, and the globalizing economy/”post-pandemic” economy.