LAMONT, Calif. — On a sunny day when her fellow college students were grabbing beach towels and beer, Nathalie Sanchez was knocking on the doors of farmworkers left jobless after a recent freeze killed much of the state's citrus crop.

It's not the first spring break she's spent doing service instead of shots.

The senior art major was among 10 students from Loyola Marymount University who lived and worked with San Joaquin Valley farmworkers for a week in March, learning about the history of the rural labor movement and organizing a food and clothing drive for out-of-work field hands.

The program, a partnership between Loyola Marymount and the Dolores Huerta Foundation, a Bakersfield nonprofit named for the co-founder of the United Farm Workers union, is among a growing number of "alternative" spring breaks in which students skip the boozy revelry in favor of volunteer work around the world.

In past years, Sanchez traveled to the Dominican Republic for a fair trade coffee effort and to Guatemala to help with community development in a Mayan village. This spring break, the art major from Cudahy stayed closer to home. Lamont, the farm community she visited, is about 110 miles north of her school's Los Angeles campus.

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"We understand there are issues that affect communities that are in our own country," Sanchez said, "and here, in our own state."

In this city of about 13,000, the everyday concerns include pesticide drift and organizing to fight for better wages. But these days the main topic of conversation is the cold snap.

Days of subfreezing temperatures in January ruined more than $1 billion worth of citrus and other crops, according to the state, making it the most devastating blow to the industry in more than a decade. As many as 28,000 farmworkers lost their jobs.

Sanchez and her fellow students sorted donated clothes and went door to door assessing needs and telling workers about the food and clothing giveaway.

At a local community center, they filled boxes with bread and canned food for displaced workers. "It's nice to see people from outside of our city come here to help," said Guadalupe Flores, 59, a Mexican immigrant who stood in the clothes line after getting a box of food.

Flores had just finished the grape harvest and was getting ready to pick citrus when the cold snap hit. Now his family is getting by on his daughter's income from a grocery store cashier job.

This was the second year of the Loyola Marymount/Dolores Huerta program. The students live in the farm laborers' modest homes and apartments for a week and learn about current issues confronting agricultural workers and community organizing.

"Last year they actually worked in the fields and saw how hard that is," said Pablo Rodriguez, an organizer for the foundation. "But this year they're seeing what it's like when there's no work, which is a different kind of challenge."

Break Away, an Atlanta-based nonprofit that trains students for service-based trips, estimates that more than 35,000 college students spend part of their vacation each year doing volunteer work. Service-oriented breaks began as the flip-side option to the traditional week of spring debauchery, but many schools now offer programs during winter break, summer vacation and even over a weekend.

Students from the University of Wyoming went to New Orleans to rebuild homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina; University of Kansas students worked at homeless shelters in Washington; and volunteers from the University of Northern Florida helped a rain forest conservation program in Ecuador.

Loyola Marymount's alternative breaks have become so popular the application process is now competitive. Applicants go through an interview and pay for the trip themselves; the Lamont trip was $250 but expeditions abroad can cost as much as $1,200.

"There's a real desire to understand our world abroad, but there's also an interest in understanding communities in our own country," said Maria Alderete, director of the university's Center for Service and Action.

The students said their service didn't end with the resumption of classes.

They have arranged for teens from a valley high school to visit Loyola's campus after talking to the students about going to college.

"A lot of people speak about service," said Juliana Xochimitl, 20. She felt a personal connection to this trip because her parents are Mexican immigrants who had to work low-paying jobs.

"It is here that I finally saw things being done," she said, "and we're the ones doing it, we young people."

On the Net: Loyola Marymount University: http:www.lmu.edu; Dolores Huerta Foundation: http:www.doloreshuerta.org; Break Away: http:www.alternativebreaks.org