Photograph: J.D. Levine

Starting in 1978 with a dozen participants, the student-led Appalachia Volunteers program has organized annual spring break service trips to poor and marginalized communities throughout the Southeast and beyond. This year 620 undergraduates traveled to 37 sites in eight states—the culmination of a planning and training process that began in October. On the afternoon of Saturday, February 28, group leaders Luke Hughes ’10 (left) and Sarah Foster ’09 took a final head count before their bus departed Chestnut Hill for a Habitat for Humanity site in High Point, North Carolina.