Pictured are images from the January 2025 Hurricane Milton Service Trip with All Hands and Hearts.

Besides engaging students academically with the Advanced Certificate in Trauma and Disaster Mental Health, the IDMH involves undergraduate and graduate students through fieldwork experiences. Where IDMH staff accompany students on service trips where we have collaborated with nonprofit disaster relief organizations like All Hands and Hearts to offer physical assistance in the disaster relief process.  

On our most recent trip, IDMH Staff accompanied 8 students on a service trip with All Hands and Hearts, a non-profit that the IDMH has collaborated with multiple times throughout the years. Service trips allow for hands on, front-line experiences viewing the multitude of difficulties, barriers, and hardships that people affected by disaster experience, as well as those that the longer-term disaster relief workers experience primarily and vicariously. 

 Below are stories written by students about their experiences from past service trips.  

The Orocovis Mural - Alyssa Dudinyak: "I worked tirelessly for five days from 7 AM each day until dark. Five days after my second arrival, I finished the mural by flashlight, an hour before I had to leave for my flight."

Read the story of Alyssa Dudinyak, a student who was commissioned to paint a mural in Orocovis, Puerto Rico to showcase the recovery efforts of the community there after the effects of Hurricane Maria. 

Service Trip to Coastal Bend - Joseph Foster: “I wanted to take photos at all of the sites, because no one else was really documenting it,” Foster said. “We were trying to help them rebuild their homes and rebuild their lives. We don’t want to leave them behind.”

This is what student Joesph Foster had to say about his service trip to Coastal Bend, Texas to assist the community with reconstruction almost 2 years after the destruction of Hurricane Harvey hit the region.