IS THIS ANY WAY TO SPEND SPRING BREAK? STUDENTS GOING WILD FOR CHARITY WORK DURING A BREAK FROM SCHOOL.

Byline: Valerie Kuklenski Staff Writer

Late at night on certain cable channels, commercials for "Girls Gone Wild" videos show 20-somethings in the depths of debauched revelry, feeding a fear that American youth are falling off a moral precipice.

For a more optimistic view, check out "The Amazing Break," an MTV documentary that chronicled trips taken earlier this month by scores of college students who chose to take what's known as an alternative spring break, a week away from classes doing something to make the world a better place. It's the antithesis of the vacations those videos portray: seven sun-and-sand days of, at best, laziness and, at worst, self-destructive behavior.

The MTV teams, which included the inaugural Storm Corps crew that worked with United Way in the hurricane-battered Gulf region, are just a portion of the high-school and college students who are learning how to give and getting something back in the process. Students traveled to a homeless shelter in Florida, a child-care center in Costa Rica, even an orphanage in South Africa to do their part in improving the lives of others.

Jaime Linn, a 25-year-old graduate student at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, returned this week from a mission trip to Aldama, a rural town in Chihuahua, Mexico. She was serving as a translator and escort to eight high-school students from a large church in Fayetteville, Ark., in their assignment to help build a new Protestant church in the village.

"We bent rebar and did blocks and cement," Linn said. "It was awesome. These were sophomores and juniors from very privileged backgrounds, as I am. It was very good for us to see life that was a little bit different."

Alicia Cohen is preparing to take part in a hurricane recovery trip to New Orleans coordinated by Hillel, the Jewish student group at California State University, Northridge. Cohen leads the local organization's service corps and says soon after Hurricane Katrina struck, students began inquiring about traveling to the region to help. Giving hours of work seemed the best response for students who don't have much cash for charitable giving. After checking with organizations in Houston and New Orleans, spring break, the week of April 10, seemed to be the best time to make the trip.

When word of the project spread, there was no shortage of volunteers. "We started with a budget for 10 students and we're taking 23," Cohen said. "We've probably had interest from 45 to 50 students."

The Hillel trip, funded mainly by Jewish organizations and private donations, comes during Passover, which presents some additional challenges. Cohen said there was some resistance at the outset stemming from concerns that students would violate Jewish law regarding diet and prohibitions against work at the first two days of the holiday week.

"But I didn't want to look at it as something that was going to stop us from doing something that I saw as being really important to our students, and to the CSUN community as a whole."

Organizers have arranged two Seders and kosher provisions for the students, and on the holiest days will have them serving food rather than doing the heavy labor, such as mold abatement and roofing, that they expect later in the week.

Chad Boettcher, director of strategic partnerships at MTV, oversees the network's efforts to get viewers involved with social causes, such as its "Choose or Lose" initiative to spur voter turnout in the 2004 election, and its newer thinkMTV project. His Storm Corps initiative created with United Way was planned as an alternative spring break for 100 students from around the country.

"When we first launched the (public service announcement) at the beginning of February, it was pretty clear right away we were going to be inundated with young people," Boettcher said. "We had tens of thousands actually log on to the site with over a quarter million page views."

There is a huge, largely untapped volunteer force in the MTV audience, given its standing as the No. 1 basic cable channel for 12- to 24-year-olds for nine years. The thinkMTV.com site - which boasts MTV.com's second-most-popular message board - has been directing viewers to other organizations that would put them to work during spring break and in the future.

The real success of alternative spring breaks, organizers say, is in making the spirit of such endeavors last for years to come.

Boettcher says Storm Corps applicants had to write out two essays in their online forms.

"One was why did they think it was important to volunteer over their spring break in the Gulf Coast. And then, second, what was it they were going to do back in their community after that one week, because while it was important to go down there and help build homes and rebuild lives during the week, we knew it was just a dent in a huge problem."

Boettcher was set to hold a conference call today with his Storm Corps participants to discuss leadership training, grant opportunities and other means to build on their experience.

Nikki Maxwell, CSUN's student development director, has seen growth in the number of students interested in volunteerism, and the campus' response to Katrina - $90,000 in donations collected - reflects that cultural change.

She said some of the enthusiasm for helping Katrina victims stems from the students' understanding that so many came to CSUN's aid in the aftermath of the 1994 Northridge Earthquake. "But I also see more and more students and groups saying, `Service is part of our mission statement,' and, `Service is really important to us."

Linn, the Fuller seminary student, says the beneficiaries of those construction projects and support services are not the only ones to gain from volunteerism. She helps to arrange mission trips for the campus and has noticed the positive effects on those putting in hard work for a good cause. "Very often, when they come back they find they're more refreshed than if they sat around a pool all week."

Boettcher said there are more thinkMTV projects in the works that would provide constructive outlets for energized youth, but he wouldn't give any details.

`I think at MTV we like to see ourselves as a reflection of the lives of our audience," Boettcher said. "And whether it's through community service programs at their schools or interest that they take on their own ... thinkMTV will seek to provide them opportunities to give back. And the more they want to give back, the more thinkMTV is going to be there for them to give them those opportunities."

Valerie Kulenski, [phone]

valerie.kuklenski(at)dailynews.com

THE AMAZING BREAK

Where: MTV, or viewable anytime at www.thinkMTV.com.

When: 10:30 a.m. and 8 p.m. today.

CAPTION(S):

5 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) What I did on my SPRING BREAK

College students skip fun in the sun to help those less fortunate

(2 -- 4 -- color) MTV's ``The Amazing Break'' is chronicling the new trend of students spending their vacations helping the less fortunate - including Hurricane Katrina victims - rather than lounging by the pool.