Students Today Leaders Forever, a volunteer club at Iowa State, will be taking a group of approximately 45 students on a nine-day, six-city service trip through the states and cities leading from Iowa to San Antonio, Texas.

Students Today Leaders Forever, or STLF, will be leaving on Friday, March 9 to embark on the Spring Break “Pay It Forward” tour with a mission to help people in a different community each day. This year the group will be starting their trip off in Wichita, Kansas, and along the way, the group will volunteer with groups and organizations within each of the six cities. They will volunteer at places such as local soup kitchens or Habitat for Humanity to help make an impact in those communities. One of the impacts the group made last year was performing approximately three months of work in a matter of a few hours for a land trust organization in Athens, Georgia.

“Hearing that is just something that is so inspiring because you’re able to, even if you are there for such a short period of time, help out other communities in a huge way that you could never imagine doing by yourself,” Brenna Russell, the treasurer for STLF at Iowa State, said of the group’s impact in Georgia last year.

As the group makes their way south, they will also work on building professional, leadership, and personal skills as well as group bonding during the nightly activities. Those on the trip also have the opportunity to explore all of the cities they visit after their service activity each morning. Once in San Antonio, the group from Iowa State will meet up with other STLF chapters, resulting in 300 people joining together to finish off the trip with a large service project together.

“It’s been really cool to see how grateful a lot of these people are that we volunteer with,” said Keith Carlson, the president of Iowa State’s chapter of STLF.

The “Pay It Forward” trip is not the only event that STLF has throughout the year. The club also hosts other service projects around central Iowa throughout the year as well as smaller projects during the meetings.

“It’s pretty awesome to see college students spending some of their time to help communities around the nation,” Austin Goddard, one of the bus core members, said of the trip.