globalsl.org grew into its role as a field-building space after the 2nd International Service-Learning Summit. It brings together several disparate fields of scholarship and practice, at the nexus of global learning, cooperative development, & community-university partnership. 

The network behind globalsl.org is keenly aware of the considerable risks involved with attempting community-driven development across cultures (See 1, 2, or 3). Institutional commitments to the website as a field-building space grow out of deep desire to ensure that all institutions thoughtfully and ethically engage with the challenging issues of power and privilege that are inexorably intertwined with this work.

All network members, whether at the sponsor, partner, or friend levels, are contributing to the continuous maintenance of a space that:

• utilizes weekly blog posts to report emerging research, present tough questions for the field, and profile best practice programs;
• continuously adds peer-reviewed resources to the research wiki, adding to the 300+ already there;
• offers tools and syllabi supporting global learning and community-university partnerships;
• engages the challenging question of how these fields of practice relate to secular and faith-based values, as well as their integration;
• coordinates a multi-institutional research initiative that provides individual institutions with global learning evaluations while creating a large research database to consider the relationships among populations, program factors, and student learning outcomes;

Sponsors, partners, and friends support all of the above, while receiving clear tangible benefits as well. The benefits associated with each level are detailed below. New network members are being accepted through February 15 for the 2015 calendar year. Interested parties should email buildingbetterworld@gmail.com.

At the $4,000 commitment level, sponsors* receive:

• Sponsor page recognition for field-leadership at the nexus of global learning, cooperative development, & community-university partnership
• Opportunity to participate in multi-institutional research, which includes an institution-specific report on global learning outcomes, still for summer programs only at this time (Time with qualitative research analysis will be proportionate to commitment level, so sponsors will receive more individualized report attention than partners. Likewise, partners will receive more time than friends).
• Opportunity to post jobs and relevant conference announcements on globalsl.org (We are avoiding program sales at this point).

At the $2,000 commitment level, partners* receive:

• Recognition on the partners page
• Opportunity to participate in multi-institutional research, which includes an institution-specific report on global learning outcomes, still for summer programs only at this time (Time with qualitative research analysis will be proportionate to commitment level, so sponsors will receive more individualized report attention than partners. Likewise, partners will receive more time than friends).
• Opportunity to post jobs and relevant conference announcements on globalsl.org (We are avoiding program sales at this point).

At the $1,000 commitment level, friends* receive:

• Recognition on the friends page
• Opportunity to participate in multi-institutional research, which includes an institution-specific report on global learning outcomes, still for summer programs only at this time (Time with qualitative research analysis will be proportionate to commitment level, so sponsors will receive more individualized report attention than partners. Likewise, partners will receive more time than friends).
• Opportunity to post jobs and relevant conference announcements on globalsl.org (We are avoiding program sales at this point).

*While the organizers behind globalsl.org do not want to play policing roles, these levels are intended to allow institutions to enter into support roles based in large part on ability to pay. The sponsor level, therefore, is intended for prestigious or large institutions with a particularly strong commitment to conscientious service and learning across cultures. The partner level is intended for institutions that are not as well funded, yet maintain strong commitment to the principles embraced by globalsl.org. The friends level, finally, is intended for community colleges, primarily first-generation institutions, particularly small institutions, or NGOs involved in this work – provided those NGOs do not have particularly large budgets. An NGO could enter at any commitment level.