Service: A two way street

During the summer of 2010, I traveled to the slums of Mexico City for a faith-based service trip. I worked within a team of three Americans for seven weeks, living with a host family in the slums of Las Lomas de San Isidro on the city’s outskirts. We partnered with a nonprofit to teach English in the schools, organize an Olympic-style tournament for the kids and advertise community programs, such as water purification centers. I had the opportunity to meet many religious and political leaders within the slum community and to assimilate into my host family’s daily life.

Throughout the summer, I found that many of my service activities were focused on building relationships, and the interactions did not always provide tangible results. This radically changed my idea of what service meant and how I could personally grow from such experiences. Adjusting to a new culture in a healthy way was closely tied to my willingness to listen and learn. I was so enthusiastic and ready to discover more about the culture, the community, the economic conditions and even the history of Mexico. I was humbled by the generosity exhibited by my host family and was forced to develop the foreign skill of finding happiness in simplicity. Detachment from technology allowed me to more completely focus on my surroundings and my new relationships.

I went to Mexico because I have closely followed the immigration debate and have even traveled to the Texas-Mexico border on an Alternative Break trip to hear viewpoints from the front lines. A personal connection not only serves as a mechanism for compassion but as a way to eliminate apathy and stay connected to the humanity of a social issue. We Americans abstractly hear about our position of privilege, yet we often lack an experiential basis of comparison. I wanted to see what the world was like outside of the socioeconomic wealth and apparent privilege of America. In addition, I am very interested in issues of environmental justice, as many natural-resource management problems disproportionately affect those with less money and societal leverage.

I strongly believe in the importance of actively forming cross-cultural relationships and seeing new viewpoints. You do not have to go to Mexico or another country to have this type of experience. In a community service context, you can specifically focus your time, talents and resources in a way that takes you outside your social comfort zone. For you, that might mean spending time with homeless people in Washington and choosing to focus on their humanity rather than their economic status. It may mean driving to Langley Park, volunteering at an immigrant day-care center such as CentroNia and hearing about the kids’ lives and unique challenges. It may mean getting a group of friends together to make cookies for the cleaning staff on your dorm floor. However we decide to act, we must keep in mind the reciprocal nature of community service and how much other people can teach us through their views and life experiences.

Whitney Beck is a junior environmental science and policy major. She can be reached at wbeck1990 at gmail dot com. This column was originally submitted to the Leadership & Community Service-Learning Office’s Spirit of Service essay contest in December.

Education and poverty

In the spring of my sophomore year of high school, I was selected to participate in a very competitive leadership program, The Lazarus Leadership Fellows Program. To participate in this program, I needed to identify problems that affect my community. The issue I choose to work on is one that bothers me very much. That is the small percentage of Latinos graduating from high school and going on to pursue higher education. The tiny number of Latino students pursuing higher education is a problem of national concern as Latinos are the fastest growing minority in the United States.

In the second part of the project, I had to come up with some program or camp that will help to address this issue.  The only requirement was that I spend at least 200 hours in the planning and making of my project. I decided to do some motivational and informational sessions for Latinos students to motivate them go to college.  I thought if I could get prominent Latinos from the metropolitan area who struggled growing up but still succeed in their careers to come and speak to the students, the young people would be motivated. Then, after building their confidence, I would introduce them to the college process, showing them step by step what they have to do in order to go to college. I would show them how to get financial aid and scholarships and alternative ways to pursue higher education depending on their legal status.  The last part of my program involve taking them to college visits in the area and actually having them talk to college admissions counselor, attending a class, showing them a dorm room and having them see that college has a lot more to offer than just a great education. Everything was going to be provided by me and the only thing that was required was that every participant would have to write journal entries from the beginning to the end of the program so I could see if they had changed.

A week before the program started, everything was ready. The venue was reserved, speakers were lined up by theme, reservation for the college visits were made, refreshments were ready but I had one problem; nobody contacted me to participate. I did everything I could to spread the word. I put the message out on Facebook and other networks like BCC net.  I recorded the announcement in the school recording machine and programmed it to call the students houses. I put flyers up everywhere. But nobody called, and nobody contacted me. I had to cancel the speakers and everything else. And that was the end of my program.

I deeply believe that education can make a difference in anyone’s life. Education is the only way to break the cycle of poverty and move fight injustice in this society. I think education is the best tool to fight poverty because when people have a better education, they are able to get better jobs, support themselves as well as their families and are less likely to depend on the government for their basic needs. Educated generations are more likely to educated younger generations. Education is the only way to form an equal and global community for everyone. Finally, I realized that the educational problems of the Latino community are deeper than I had understood. This is a mystery that I want to solve.

–Sharon Perez Ferreras, UMD Freshman

 

Editors note:  After reading this submission, think about what makes a service project successful and what might cause it to be unsuccessful.  Even negative experiences represent potential for growth and learning!

Building a Community Committed to Social Change

Welcome to the new online community for Community Service-Learning at the University of Maryland College Park, where we hope to highlight what students, faculty, staff, and community partners are doing and thinking about important social issues. My goal for this blog is for it to be a chorus of voices–posts by individuals involved in all the aspects and ends of service, about the issues we are passionate about and our experiences working particularly with service-learning.

If you are involved in community service and volunteering and are affiliated with the University of Maryland or the Prince George’s County community, please consider writing something for the blog–what issues do you work with? What are you passionate about? How did you get involved and what kind of work do you do?

If you would like to submit, send any text/images etc. to jbrager@umd.edu.

–Jenna Brager
Americorps*VISTA, UMD Leadership & Community Service-Learning