Volunteer Trips provide students with an opportunity to become acquainted with the greater Vermont and Addison County communities through service. Students spend their days working with community partners to meet identified needs. Over half of Middlebury College students volunteer in the local, national, and international communities each year and it all starts with orientation!
Join your fellow Middlebury students in addressing issues of education, the environment, and social justice. Please note—we work hard to address community-identified needs while at the same time providing an engaging volunteer experience for our students. While we would like to know which area is of greatest interest to you and will tailor each trip as much as possible, our trips sometimes contain a sampling of different service opportunities that reflect the current needs of our partner agencies. No experience is necessary!
Education
Middlebury College partners with numerous schools and educational organizations, all of which rely heavily on community support to enhance opportunities for youth. Past orientation trips have worked with pre-schools, K–12 schools, and local teen centers to help with classroom set up, gardening projects, mural painting, ropes course set up, and one-on-one time with students.
Environment
One of our community’s greatest assets is our beautiful natural surroundings. The mountains, streams, lakes, and forests are maintained by many non-profit and state organizations. These agencies need a strong network of volunteers to give the landscape the time and attention required to keep this special defining characteristic of our state in tact. Past orientation trips have helped to remove invasive species with the Vermont Nature Conservancy, provided maintenance for the Trail Around Middlebury, and worked in the College’s Organic Garden.
Social Justice
Middlebury students work passionately on many issues of social justice. Poverty, hunger and homelessness, domestic violence, the needs of elders living in our community, mental illness, and substance abuse are among the many causes students work to address. Our partners have included our local community action group, the John Graham Emergency Shelter, WomenSafe for women in crisis, Habitat for Humanity, the Addison County Parent/Child Center which serves teen parents and their children, the Champlain Valley Agency on Aging, and the Vermont Foodbank.