Actively Building Community Solidarity
(ABCS)
conferences
2024 ABCS Information
Break Away Members and Community,
First and foremost, we want to express our sincere gratitude for your support of Break Away’s mission. Many are returning from Alternative Spring Breaks and your commitment towards being community collaborators is seen and greatly appreciated.
It is with a heavy heart that we must inform you that we have made the difficult decision to cancel our Actively Building Community Solidarity (ABCS) sessions scheduled for summer 2024.
Our commitment to our members and this movement remains the same. Over the next few months, the Board of Directors and staff will be working together strategically to determine Break Away’s next steps. They will be exploring new offerings for everyone to remain engaged and opportunities for Advantage members to utilize membership discounts in a different way. If you already registered and paid for the ABCS we will be in touch with more information on a refund.
In an effort to keep communication clear and open, the Break Away Board of Directors will be hosting a Town Hall to answer any questions related to the ABCS. Date Soon/TBD.
Thank you for your commitment to Break Away and your patience as we navigate our next steps. If you have any specific questions for the Break Away Board of Directors you can reach out to them at breakawayboard@gmail.com.
The definitive leadership experience for campuses focused on justice-driven community engagement programs.
For the past 30 years, Break Away has been hosting the Actively Building Community Solidarity (ABCS) conference series throughout the summer. The ABCS are experiential training sessions that provide student + staff leaders with the knowledge, skills, and connections they need to start or strengthen a justice-driven community engagement program.
In 2022 we changed the words behind ABCS to reflect our evolving mission, vision, values, + audience. In 2023, we also changed the words behind ABCS. Alternative became Actively, Break became Building, Citizenship became Community, + Schools became Solidarity. Actively Building Community Solidarity conference participants will continue to experience the same magic, energy, and growth.
The ABCS combine workshops and planning sessions to help you develop an action plan for the upcoming academic year and beyond. You can look forward to interactive workshops on justice education and service-learning best practices, with processing time in a small group setting. The result is a dynamic conference combining learning in workshops with opportunities to foster connections with student + staff leaders from campuses nationwide.
Here’s what past ABCS participants are saying about their experiences:
“It’s an amazing conference where you get to meet a variety of different people who want to further educate, reflect, grow when it comes to social justice and working with communities to address social justice issues.” (2023 Atlanta participant)
“This conference provides an opportunity to gain endless resources and learn other perspectives of various AB programming. You will learn about ways to build and sustain relationships with community partners and can find ways to re-work/word your trip focus, values, missions, visions, etc. to ways that are asset-based, instead of deficit-based. While not everything may work at your institution, you can still take away something of value moving forward.” (2022 participant)
“This conference gave me such an in-depth understanding about many aspects of social justice and community outreach that I did not completely understand before. I'd recommend it to anyone who is stepping into a leadership position and doesn't feel completely confident about communicating this information to their teams.” (2021 participant)
“The ABCS are a change for both self growth and organization wide growth. It's an opportunity to improve yourself and become a more knowledgeable active citizen. If you have concerns about leading your trip - attend! If you want to improve your org - attend! If you want to learn something new - attend! If you want to meet people in AB from all over - attend!” (2020 participant)