3 Clear Principles for Honorable Activism

Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation  Alex de Waal originally published this insightful and provocative essay on April 30th of this year. Considered one of the foremost experts on Sudan and the Horn of Africa, de Waal’s scholarly work and practice has also probed humanitarian crisis and response, human rights, HIV/AIDS and governance in Africa, and conflict and peace-building. Professor de Waal teaches for the Fletcher School at Tufts University. Reclaiming Activism By Alex de Waal For most of my adult life I introduced myself as an “activist” first and a writer, researcher, or practitioner of humanitarian action or peacemaking second….

Reflecting, Reconsidering, and Re-Connecting: The Journey Home

Re-entry is the elephant in the room for international educators. We know, from Student Learning Abroad, that systematic reflective activity after abroad experiences significantly improves students’ intercultural communication skills, cultural understanding, and self-awareness. As I have shared elsewhere, Richard Kiely’s chameleon complex also documents the extent to which participants returning from global service-learning experiences typically struggle to reconnect with friends and family. Yet courses after abroad experiences are rarely offered, perhaps due to intense focus on increasing the number of students studying abroad, combined with students’ sense of career and academic constraints as well as institutional limitations in a time of…

Michigan Journal Call for GLOBAL SERVICE-LEARNING Abstracts

The Fall 2014 issue of the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning (MJCSL) will feature a special section on global service-learning guest co-edited by Richard Kiely, Cornell University and Eric Hartman, Providence College. Please consider submitting an article to this special section of the MJCSL. Global service-learning is a community-driven service experience that employs structured, critically reflective practice to better understand common human dignity; self; culture; positionality; socio-economic, political, and environmental issues; power relations; and social responsibility, all in global contexts. The editors welcome submissions of articles and reflective essays focusing on innovations in pedagogy, theory, research, practice, institutional models,…

Between Hope and Humility: Navigating a Space for Ethical Global Engagement

The presentation below was delivered by Eric Hartman as part of Becker College’s Global Voices of Change Speaker Series on November 4 in Worcester, Massachusetts. Thank you all for the opportunity to be here with you today. It is an honor and a privilege. I appreciate the work you’re putting into this Global Citizenship speaker series. And I very deeply appreciate the invitation to be part of this conversation. Thank you. I’m going to start with a piece by the great Northern Irish poet Seamus Heaney. Human beings suffer They torture one another They get hurt and hard No poem or…

The Spirit of Giving? … Why? For Whom? To What End? (another BotB: Best of the Best)

Title: Starfish Hurling and Community Service Author: Keith Morton Target Audience: Students, Community Members, Faculty, Staff Date: 1999 Succinct Summary: Morton challenges readers to think critically about service and its implications. This brief reflective piece connects well with his longer exploration of the same themes in the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, The Irony of Service: Charity, Project, and Social Change in Service-Learning (1995). by Keith Morton One of the most popular stories in community service events is that of the starfish: a (fill in your description, usually young) person is running, hurling starfish deposited on the beach by a storm back into the sea. “What are…

Watch Dr. Maya Angelou's Tribute Poem for Nelson Mandela

Released by the US State Department, written by Angelou, “on behalf of the American people.”

BotB: Soul of a Citizen

Title: Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in a Cynical Time Author: Paul Roget Loeb Target Audience: Students Date: 1999 (1st Edition), 2010 (2nd Edition) Succinct Summary: This collection of stories of social change will restore your faith in both society and the power of one. Loeb not only captures the stories and teaches about current, important, and urgent social issues, but he also teaches the reader the power of a shared story. This read is an uplifting experience for those who aim to create social change, but hesitate and second-guess themselves. Reviewer quotes: “The handbook for budding social activists, veteran organizers, and anybody…

Partnering Human Rights and Engaged Scholarship in Local Communities

“Human rights pedagogy means that we are all responsible for injustice and we all have a role to combat it daily — in both small and substantial ways. The creation of a human rights pedagogy, based on interwoven liberation, requires a transformation of the classroom space beyond the four walls in a room to analyze and think about injustice in all forms” (Falcón & Jacob, 2011, p. 31).  So begins an important and provocative article in this fall’s Partnerships: A Journal of Service-Learning and Civic Engagement. As the piece proceeds UC-Berkeley’s Julie Shackford-Bradley – whose work in restorative justice has included community involvement…

5 Resources for Understanding Hidden Histories, Present Power, and The Challenge of Thanksgiving

By Eric Hartman  As the United States approaches a holiday that hides a brutal history and ignores contemporary injustices, below are five resources to move more deeply into understanding indigenous past and present. For broader insights on power, privilege, and positionality, see our related peer-reviewed resources and teaching tools. 1. Elissa Washuta, a lecturer and academic counselor in the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Washington recently published “The Wrongheaded Obsession with ‘Vanishing’ Indigenous Peoples” in Salon. Washuta criticizes the claims of photographer Jimmy Nelson, who suggests his website viewers will “Meet the Last Tribes on Earth, Before they Pass Away.” When…

Questions at the Heart of Engineering for Development

By Nora Pillard Reynolds I grab the handlebar in the back of the pickup truck to steady myself as we jolt along unpaved roads in the mountains of Nicaragua. I listen as my friend and project director, Junior, describes a problem that had arisen in one of the villages where we recently constructed a gravity-based water system. He tells me, “someone is cutting the pipes at night to cut off water supply to the village church and school. They dig up the pipe and slash it with a machete until is cuts off the water to the rest of the…

The Economy of Global Service Learning and the Problem of Silence

By Cynthia Toms “…Privilege is not visible to its holder; it is merely there, a part of the world, a way of life, simply the way things are. Others have a lack, an absence, a deficiency.” (Wildman, S., & Davis, A., 2008) The terms global engagement and social responsibility have become commonplace in higher education rhetoric. Curricula and pedagogies that help students engage the social, civic, and economic challenges of a diverse and unequal world not only serve as touchstones for our institutional missions, they are increasingly prominent among funding and expansion priorities. This can be witnessed in large-scale efforts…

Assessing Impact in Global Engagements and Awareness Raising… and Considering the Neoliberal Challenge: Resources & Teasers

By Eric Hartman  The International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement met for its annual conference in early November. I was fortunate to be part of a few presentations with colleagues who are advancing our understanding of Community impact assessment in global service-learning Awareness-raising activities and their evaluation, and The relationship between neoliberalism and the service-learning / community engagement movement. I’m sharing abstracts and linking to related PowerPoints below. I’m very pleased to write that several colleagues will share their reflections and research plunging more deeply into these themes in the coming weeks. Additionally, others who attended the…

Remembering the "Why"

In a reflective guest post, Northeastern University’s Lori Gardinier (PhD, MSW) challenges us to clarify WHY we engage in global service-learning. She couples clear-eyed realism, “some student projects have measurable impact and others are dead on arrival,” with idealistic hope regarding the opportunity to “take people out of their comfort zones and provide a space to assess and refine their passions” in nonprofit practice and social change. We hope her reflections drive you to more clearly address your “why” and we wonder whether the Fair Trade Learning Standards might serve as a policy-response to this very important question. To keep…

Chronicle of Higher Ed: "Some Global Health Programs Let Students Do Too Much, Too Soon" – Related Resources

From Monday’s Chronicle of Higher Education: “Over the past decade, the number of American students in health fields going abroad has nearly tripled, with many opting for programs that take them out of the classroom and into clinics and hospitals. But as participation has increased, so, too, have educators’ concerns. Far too often, experts say, students are providing patient care—conducting examinations, suturing wounds, even delivering babies—for which they have little or no training. Indeed, as competition intensifies for medical-school slots, some students may actually be going overseas for hands-on experience they could not get in the United States, in hopes…

The Colin Powell Center, The City College of New York Western Washington University, Center for Service Learning Western Kentucky University, ALIVE Center for Community Partnerships Central College, Center for Community-Based Learning Goucher College, Community Service and Social Justice Northwestern University Center for Civic Engagement Global Engagement Studies Institute University of North Florida Community Engagement Transformational Learning Opportunity Pedagogy Clinton School of Public Service McDaniel College Loyola University Chicago, Center for Experiential Learning Griffith University, Service-Learning College of William and Mary Community Engagement Alternative Spring Break Blogs Michigan State University, College of Human Medicine  Pacific University, Center for Civic Engagement American…

BotB: What We Don't Talk About When We Don't Talk About Service

Title: What We Don’t Talk About When We Don’t Talk About Service Authors: Adam Davis Target Audience: Students, Faculty, Citizens Date: 2006 Succinct Summary: In order to claim  that Service Is Good (SIG), we must discuss why we do service, (for altruistic, selfish, or faith-based reasons), and for whom the service is good, (the serving, the served, or all of the above), which leads us to the conclusion that Service Is Not Simple (SINS). All of these complexities go unnoticed and unsorted if they are not discussed. And just as we must ask why we do service, we must as why it is hard to…

The Growth of a Field: Best Practices and Research in International Volunteering, Global Service-Learning, and Critical Global Engagement

By Eric Hartman There are existing bodies of literature that have established some research and best practices in international volunteering and global service-learning. The challenge, at this point in the field’s development, seems to be gathering those various research strands in one space. One year ago, we posted Situating Global Service-Learning: Drawing on Diverse Fields for Informed Practice, complete with hyperlinks to the research and a chart delineating separate strands.  Last week at Northwestern’s International Service-Learning Summit, I had the good fortune to learn of additional important research strands that are not reflected in that previous post. I’m going to…

The Market, Ideals, and International Volunteers: The Story and the Tensions Behind Fair Trade Learning

By Eric Hartman Below are my comments as part of a plenary panel at the International Service-Learning Summit at Northwestern University last night. Called “Can ISL be a Fair Trade: Developing a Road Map for Higher Standards,” the panel also included Matthias Brown (Association of Clubs, Amizade Site Director, Petersfield, Jamaica),  Patrick Green (Loyola University Chicago), and Richard Kiely (Cornell University). The slides are available here. As always, your comments are most welcome. ******************************************************************************** Good evening. Thank you for being here. And many thanks to Northwestern’s Center for Global Engagement for hosting – and thank you for your continuous demand for good and…

BotB: Walk Out Walk On

Title: Walk Out Walk On: A Learning Journey into Communities Daring to Live the Future Now Authors: Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze Target Audience: Students Date: 2011 Succinct Summary: Filled with experience and vivid examples, Walk Out Walk On expresses values supporting community-based development and global citizenship as well as exploring the balance between service and self-benefit. The authors challenge the accepted assumptions in international development and encourage brave new methods for supporting communities in their development. Reviewer quotes: “They discuss viewing people as citizens instead of as clients… It’s a wonderful section about material possessions and the importance of…

BotB: Where's the Learning in Service-Learning?

Title: Where’s the Learning in Service-Learning? Authors: Janet Elyer & Dwight E. Giles Jr. Target Audience: Faculty Date: 1999 Succinct Summary: This must-read for service-learning course and program development shares an abundance of evidence-based information to support high quality service-learning that improves student learning in higher education. Reviewer quotes: “It is hard to overstate the importance of this book to the field. The research presented here should contribute significantly to those responsible for improving program effectiveness or advocating for this kind of pedagogy. The careful research and thoughtful commentary provide a wealth of insights about service-learning and how best to…