IS CHARITY ENOUGH?

The Challenges of Community based Service Learning

in Higher Education

Presented by MaDonna Thelen, Director for Community based Learning: Dominican University, River Forest, IL

Millennials: We Suck and We’re Sorry

Generation Y: Slacktivists or Socially Conscious

“Wevolution” exhibits a WE

opposed to a ME. 73% will vote for a President based on

who will make the world better overall,

rather than who will make their

personal situations better.

Generation Y believe that it is on them

to make a positive change in the world.

"The Cassandra Gender Report: Generation Y: Slacktivists or Socially

Conscious?." www.cassandra.co. N.p., n.d. Web. 19

Mar. 2014. <http://www.cassandra.co/report/su-fl-2012-

mediamemo/>.

CHALLENGES for CBL/ SL of Generation Y

• GEN Y of Color• Raise the Hard

Questions• Don’t “clean up the

world” – let the messiness educate and teach

• Re-engage females in feminism

• Move BEYOND social service models

• Charity is NOT ENOUGH• Create liaisons with

community organizers• Create new “Critical

Think Tanks” to examine social problems

CHARITY:Provision of help or relief to those in need involving a transfer of resources ($$, food, shelter, knowledge, labor, time, etc.

BENEFITS:• Save lives• Prevent misery• Can help maintain the

dignity of the recipients

DEFICITS: • Too easily creates dependence;• Social problem does not change;• High rates of burnout among volunteers;• Primary beneficiary is the giver rather than the

receiver

PITFALLS and OPPORTUNITIESwith

INTERNATIONAL SERVICE

SERVICE opens the windows to the world.

BUT…..Do we understand what we see? Can we interpret and learn justice from what we experience?

How do we who are engaged in Higher Education promote civic engagement with this generation of students?

– Do we teach advocacy?– Can we teach skills for creating a “sea change?”

civic engagement? Social Activism?

(Corporation for National and Community Service, 2006). Research (Astin, Vogelgesang,

Ikeda,& Lee, 2000) on these efforts indicates that students develop greater empathy for others, gain greater appreciation for the problems of society, take a greater interest in related academic course material, and make closer connections between learning and living when they participate in community service, especially when it includes a reflective component. These are all positive and important educational accomplishments. Colleges and universities are, however, much less effective at preparing and motivating college students to become engaged in the political process.

Service does not necessarily result in civic engagement…but it helps lay the foundation

CHALLENGES: Charity does not generally seek to alter systems that produce inequality, rather it temporarily reallocates surplus assets that the giver can control.

CHALLENGES: Charity treats the symptoms of a problem, yet overlooks or even ignores the underlying causes.

"If you have come to help me you are wasting your time. But, if you have come because your liberation is bound with mine, then let us work together".

Australian Aboriginal woman

CHALLENGES: Charity can unwittingly reinforce the underlying contributors to the social ill they are trying to alleviate.

ANALOGY

Give people a fish and you feed them for a day.Teach them to fish and they feed themselves for a lifetime….. UNLESS…

Their fishing pole breaks and they can’t afford to buy a new one

The water gets

polluted

FISH supply is depleted from overfishing

Developers drain the lake to make

a golf course.

ANALOGY, continued

Social Justice approach to the problem of fishing….

1. Address structural matters: Adequate fish in the lake: restocking; conservation; restricting people for overfishing; removing sources of pollution 2. Do the research: Who? What?

When? Where ? How? • Is the pollution happening?• Are the fish dying?• Is the lake changing?3. Create the Actions for Change:

• Write the letters;• Sign the petitions;• Educate the surrounding community;• Disrupt the board meetings of the

faceless and powerful multinational corporations

6 questions to guide us from Charity to Justice

1. Does the community service work undertaken by students in their service learning classes empower the recipients?

2. Are students required to examine whether and how their service work helps to address the root causes of the problem

3. Does the service learning encourage students to see that the shortcomings of the individuals in need are not the cause of the problems that service-learning activities attempt to address?

4. Are the institutional operations of the university-community partnerships organized in such a way as to support and sustain the collaborative efforts of the faculty, students, and community members?

5. Does the university-community collaboration build community, increase social capital, and enhance diversity?

6. Do educational institutions operate their community partnership programs in accord with social justice principles?

TEACH the ISM’s: Racism, Classism…. And examine the systems that maintain power imbalance, oppression and inequalities.

TEACH critical reflection methods

STUDY and discuss White Privilege

PARTICIPATE in an orientation with the agency, its staff (and clients) in the neighborhood

ASSESS the experience in collaboration with the community partner and with the prepatory teaching as a backdrop

REFLECTIONFrom the Latin: “to bend back”In reflection students “bend the metaphorical light of their experiences back onto their minds”

Service Action does not automatically become service attitude. The depth of reflection determines the quality of the attitude and the quality of the action.

EXPERIENCE needs reflection in order to move from reaction to learning.

Distinguishing Service Learning Outcomes from Traditional Learning:

• Results from the interplay of emotional, visceral, somatic, social, spiritual, political, moral, cultural, and cognitive learning processes that occur in SL contexts

• Learning happens because SL places students in unpredictable and dissonant situations where deep relationships can be developed, power is negotiated, decisions are made with incomplete information and lives & livelihoods are at stake. (Richard Kiely, Cornell Urban Scholars Program)

– This Learning occurs because of REFLECTION

1. Journaling Head; Heart; Hands What? So What? Now What? DIGA – Describe; Interpret; Generalize; Apply

2. Reflective Essays3. Guided meditation4. Open ended discussion questions

What aspects of the Welfare system might you change based on your experience: What programs would you propose to reduce the damaging social effects of racism?

5. Academic Journal-Essay: essay that looks specifically at course materials through the lens of the service learning experience

6. Annotated Journals (annotations from course related materials)7. Oral Presentations: applying course material to experience

REFLECTION METHODS

Development of Cultural Humility: main characteristic needed for developing intercultural competence (humility allows us to stand with, neither above nor below)

• Respect for the validity of other peoples’ cultures

• Attitudes without judgment

• Requires recognition of diverse worldviews as equally legitimate

• Implies the recognition of one’s own culture, its privileges and capital

How have your values or your ideas been changed by your learning in El

Salvador?• “I am a different person can could never view the world the

way I used to. I have become a lot less selfish and more aware of the different issues that are taking place in the world.”

• “I became a little less positive towards changes that can be done, but at the same time, I became more motivated to influence others who are not aware of these issues of injustice.”

• “I have learned faith is everything, but power allied with evil destroys hope and good will.”

• “I have learned that selfishness has become an embedded value in today’s society more than ever…this is a global phenomenon. …on the contrary, activism was a ripple effect felt throughout the country (El Salvador).”

Student reflections

SKILLS for DEVELOPING CULTURAL COMPETENCE

Understanding Privilege:

Unearned benefits on the basis of sex, color or social status, generally as a member of the dominant group

Cultural Capital: specialized or insider knowledge not available equitably to all which confers power and status readily available to the dominant group.

Understanding Power:

as experienced by control, influence, authority, ability to influence social structures- afforded to the dominant group

1. MINDSET -- knowledgeInvestigation of MARGINALIZATION (exclusion or separation of individuals and groups from access to power, opportunities, and resources afforded to others.)• Study Historical layers of Marginalization• Implications for Self development/ self image• Recognition of privilege• Awareness of racism as the result of power and privilege

used to oppresses people of a particular race or culture

2. HEART SET – empathy (movement away from sympathy)• Feeling/ recognition of oppressive effects of

marginalization

3. SKILL SET – development of intercultural skills• Communication• Cultural competence• Human relations• Collaboration• Commitment to social change

What’sNeededTo DevelopCulturalCompetence???????????

“This country cannot afford to educate a generation that acquires knowledge without ever understanding how that knowledge can benefit society or influence democratic decision-making.”

“We must teach skills and values of democracy, creating innumerable opportunities for our students to practice and reap the results of the real, hard work of citizenship.” (President’s Declaration on the Civic Responsibility of Higher Education, Campus Compact, 2004)