Making a Difference, Not a Disturbance Meeting your hosts' needs starts with considering your own
By Martha Merrill
You’re thinking about doing service abroad. But there are so many programs, so many places, and so many projects. How do you choose? You are to be commended for wanting to give as well as to take from your experience abroad. However, your ability to give will be greatly enhanced if you consider these four aspects of service-learning programs—and of yourself—before you go.
The program's relative emphasis on learning and service: Look at the design of the program and try to distinguish between programs that focus primarily on service, those that focus primarily on learning, and those that provide a balance between the two (see, for example, Berkeley Service-Learning Research and Development Center Director Andy Furco’s article). You may think initially that you can give the most in a program that emphasizes service over learning. Think again. If you’re going abroad, do you understand your host culture well enough to know how your behavior will be perceived? Do you understand the social and economic system of the country well enough to know precisely why the service you are providing is needed?
Who decides what the service will be? To what extent was the decision about what kind of service was needed made by outsiders instead of local people? What were the criteria for determining what kinds of services to provide? In rural Tajikistan, if girls attend secondary school at lower rates than boys, is the reason traditional thinking among parents, or is the reason that there’s no road between Village A, where some girls live, and Village B, where the school is located, so that getting to school is dangerous and time-consuming? In short, service is someone’s idea of a solution to a problem. Who defined that problem, and who determined that the service you’re going to give is the best solution to it?
Whether the service is project or process: A project is an activity that has a clear beginning and end, when you can say, “It’s finished.” Repairing the roof on a school is an example of a project. A process is more on-going; helping a child to understand fractions in an after-school program is a process. Both kinds of service have positive and negative aspects.
In disaster relief situations, completing projects—building a shelter, distributing food, providing transportation—may be the most important service you can give. Sometimes, however, projects are designed with the priorities of volunteers and donors in mind, not the needs of clients or hosts. For example, a group of volunteers from the U.K. painted a mural on the walls of a school in India. While the mural gave pleasure to those who looked at it, the pupils had to vacate the classroom, the teacher had to create alternate lesson plans, and the principal spent time working with the volunteer coordinator on logistics. Was the benefit of the project worth the disruption and the lost learning time for pupils?
Projects also can be done in isolation from the host community. For instance, your group can repair the roof on a school and have only minimal contact with local people. However, if you’re involved in a process like tutoring, then you’re more likely to be in direct contact with people in your host culture. You then need to do an honest self assessment. Do you have the language knowledge, the cultural knowledge, and the skills to provide that service? If not, then are you really providing a service to anyone, or are you using the host people as objects for your own learning?
Your own needs for support vs. challenge: The social psychologist Lev Vygotsky came up with the term “the zone of proximal development." What this refers to is the place betweenwhat you know so well that you don’t even think about how to do it and what you don’t know anything about and can’t do. In the “zone of proximal development” you’re challenged enough to learn, but supported enough so that the learning isn’t terrifying. You can think of this in academic terms. Maybe, for example, you studied Spanish in high school and took a placement test when you got to college so you wouldn’t be in a class that was too easy or too difficult.
There are also other ways you should think of support and challenge. First, think of emotional support. How often do you call your parents? Do you talk over every major decision with your best friend? Will being away from these emotional supports be more of a challenge than you can handle? Second, think about the challenges of encountering difference. How much time have you spent with people who are different from yourself?
A Rotary Group Study Exchange participant from New Jersey who studied in the southern Philippines was served starfish in coconut milk for breakfast the first morning she was there. How would you react if that happened to you?
Service learning abroad presents challenges academically, emotionally, and culturally. If you go into a situation that challenges you more than you can cope with, not only will you not learn; you also will be a burden on the very people you hoped to help.
Martha Merrill is the Dean of Academic Programs at the International Partnership for Service-Learning and Leadership, an organization that provides undergraduate study abroad programs, a master's degree that
takes place in Jamaica, Mexico, and England, and consulting services, including intercultural education program design. Previously, she taught graduate courses in international education and intercultural
communication at the School for International Training. From 1996-2001, she worked on university reform in the Kyrgyz Republic in Central Asia. Merrill is a member of the Abroad View Editorial Board.