"Sometimes college students do not think that their actions or opinions matter or that their dreams are possible, but in reality anything is possible."

- Jaqueline Murphy,
ISU student

BY CONNIE BACH| cabach@ilstu.edu | Posted: Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Spring break tour offers students chance to serve communities around U.S.

Sign-up for the Pay It Forward Tour, a nationwide community service event hosted by Students Today Leaders Forever (STLF), begins Nov. 2.

The Pay It Forward Tour is an event hosted by the many chapters of STLF across the nation. On a school vacation, college students visit six cities in nine days, performing community service.

There is an opportunity to bond with around 40 other ISU students along with students from other schools, learn leadership skills and serve communities on stops along the tour.

ISU student Jacqueline Murphy has served as part of a team managing a tour bus and now is a link between local chapters of STLF as part of regional core. She has high hopes for this year’s trip.

“Sometimes college students do not think that their actions or opinions matter or that their dreams are possible, but in reality anything is possible,” Murphy said.

Three ISU buses will travel various routes over spring break of 2012, all of them meeting up in Charleston, S.C., including one mystery route. STLF will kick off the sign-up period Nov. 2 with an informational meeting in the Bone Student Center at 8 p.m.The entire trip cost is $450.

STLF is a national organization made up of junior high, high school and college chapters all guided by a national office.

The goal, according to their website, is to “reveal leadership through service”.

Since four freshmen created STLF at ISU in 2004, thousands of hours of service have been done by hundreds of students who say the tour is something hard to understand from the outside, hard to explain from the inside.