Program Participant Expectations

Whether in Brazil providing real vocational opportunities for children who would otherwise be homeless or completing immediately applicable research on HIV/AIDS educational programs in rural Tanzania, global service-learning courses present incredible opportunities. Students find themselves subject to ideas and experiences that are intellectually, physically, and emotionally challenging. Unlike traditional university programs, global service-learning programs do not automatically stop and start with each class meeting. The learning and the challenges are continuous.

Academic Challenges
Class sizes are small, so an ongoing intellectual exchange among the faculty member, service-learning facilitator, students, and community members is possible in a way that is rarely witnessed on contemporary college campuses. This also means that the academics are demanding, that there is no opportunity to hide near the back of a large classroom, and that every course member is called upon to offer their insights and experiences on a regular basis.

Physical Challenges
Living in an unfamiliar community, at high altitude or near a tropical area at sea level, is amazing and difficult. As the cultural immersion portion of the course begins, students often struggle to physically meet the demands of jet lag and labor-intensive service in the context of an entirely new environment. Most often, the experiences are unparalleled, but they frequently take place within the context of fatigue or upset stomachs due to the realities of eating and drinking in developing countries. Year after year, Amizade student participants meet these challenges by accepting them, overcoming them, and moving forward.

Emotional Challenges
Issues that are often only academically experienced in university courses present themselves all too realistically through global service-learning. Students may witness stark poverty, visit hospitals where patients go without beds, or play with children whose peers have resorted to prostitution in order to afford meals. This rapid-fire exposure to some of humanity's most difficult issues, experienced in the context of an unfamiliar community, is emotionally unsettling.

Students on Amizade programs witness these issues because the ultimate goal is their elimination. Students on past courses have cooperated with community members to begin this process. In Bolivia, students helped provide homes for children who would otherwise be on the streets by serving on an orphanage construction project. In Tanzania, students helped increase the size of a rural hospital that struggled to meet the needs of the surrounding communities.

Continous Challenges
Intercultural service-learning is a continuous lived experience. Programs are not neatly packaged into conventional work weeks, and course leaders operate with an underlying assumption that Amizade student participants intend to maximize their intercultural experiences, service, and academics. If an unplanned opportunity to meet with a local official or community member suddenly presents itself at the end of a long day already filled with class meetings and service activities, the meeting will almost certainly be arranged. While the Amizade recognizes that everyone has limitations and that rest is essential to a productive experience, that recognition is balanced with the expectation that students are committed to intercultural service-learning as a continuous experience throughout the length of the course.

Amizade global service-learning programs are dynamic and responsive. They harness learning opportunities as they arise in the context of service and the applicable disciplinary theory. Their responsiveness is intellectually exciting, but it must also filter down to students, who are called upon to engage and participate intellectually, physically, and emotionally, throughout the experience. Intellectually awake students who are interested in global community as a recognition of the humanity we all hold in common will recognize the rigor of these challenges also amount to an educational ideal.