Instead of basking on the beach or hitting the ski slopes, students participating in a YMCA-organized spring break trip will be working with the less fortunate in Nicaragua.

The trip called “An Alternative to Spring Break” is set to give Iowa State students another option when deciding how to spend their nine days off.

The trip will extend from March 14-22.

Cathy Smelser, Ames/ISU YMCA executive director, said the trip was designed to give ISU students a chance to work on community service projects.

The number of applicants taken on each trip is based upon the amount of money the YMCA has each year to spend on the trip, Smelser said.

This year’s budget has allowed for a group of seven ISU students to go to Nicaragua. The students will have to make up a difference of $375, Smelser said.

“Students participating in the program were chosen from a pool of applicants,” she said. “The criteria used to select the applicants is based upon different ratios that are maintained such as male to female.”

The students will arrive on the outskirts of Managua, where in conjunction with local residents, they will begin reconstruction on buildings damaged in the wake of recent hurricanes in the Caribbean. Students will stay with local residents.

“The students will work in a low income area where they will rebuild structures in trade for food and other living items,” Smelser said.

This year, Matt Cunningham volunteered to coordinate the YMCA trip. He has participated in the program in past years and said the experience he gained from the trip was valuable.

“Those were 10 of the greatest days of my life. I was able to provide help to people in a foreign country,” he said.

Cunningham said he has received favorable feedback from past participants.

“The trip has been very successful in the past. Everyone that went had a positive attitude when they returned,” he said. “People have even applied again from year to year.”

The location of each year’s trip is decided based on where service is needed the most. This year, the Caribbean was chosen due to hurricane damage, Cunningham said.

“The hurricane made an already bad situation worse,” he said.

The citizens in Nicaragua have had to postpone rebuilding recently because of the lack of necessary funds, Cunningham said.

In order to help compensate for the lack of funding, the YMCA is trying to raise money for residents of Nicaragua.

Cunningham said the YMCA will be accepting donations in the Memorial Union on March 10.

“The two great things about donating are that money goes a lot further down there, where people have less, than it does up here, and 100 percent of the money donated goes to Nicaragua,” he said.

When the program began four years ago, students worked in Tijuana, Mexico. Last year’s trip was to Honduras.