How two months in Cluj or Cochabamba can change a student's life
"Some might call it an addiction. Others might call it determination. I don't know what to call it,'' Natasha Bennett wrote in her May 5 blog entry.
It was her answer to the question, "You're going back to Bolivia again?''
Bennett, a Latin American studies major and an associate student at the Center for the study of Genocide, Conflict Resolution and Human Rights at Rutgers-Newark, is back this summer in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and writing about it in her blog "The Bolivia Chronicles.''
Bennett is there assisting with the International Service Learning (ISL) program, part of Rutgers-Study Abroad. In addition to Bolivia, Rutgers is also sponsoring service-learning programs to Mexico, Romania, and Ghana. While abroad the students take academic courses for credit and work closely with residents to learn about living conditions and find solutions to challenges the community faces, while becoming immersed in the local culture.
Rutgers sponsors service-learning trips to Bolivia, Mexico, Romania and Ghana and university officials hope to expand the program.
“We are trying to practice a form of engaged anthropology, meaning we’re not just studying people, extracting information from them for our own academic purposes,” said Daniel Goldstein, associate professor of anthropology and the director of the International Service Learning program in Bolivia. “We are trying to give something back. Everybody benefits from the encounter.”
Joanna Regulska, vice president for international and global affairs, said Rutgers’ service learning initiative is providing new international opportunities for students. “We are creating global citizens that are familiar with different cultures and appreciate great diversity of challenges that people face around the world,” she said. Regulska is interested in eventually expanding International Service Learning from the current four countries to 15 or 20.
International Service Learning is a presidential initiative at Rutgers. President Richard L. McCormick made money available for 36 ISL scholarships this summer. To qualify for the $2,000 award, students who apply must have a minimum 2.75 GPA and be at least a sophomore.
Each program has its own specific components, depending on the community it serves.
In Bolivia, for example, the students work together on three community service projects. Some students are helping residents of Cochabamba obtain better access to drinking water while others are working with local women to teach them income-earning skills. Students are also working at an orphanage for boys in Cochabamba called Amanecer.
The consistent thread, as Goldstien explains, has been justice: What does justice mean in different cultural contexts? What are rights, and how are they understood and practiced in a society very different from our own?
Rebecca Davis, an associate professor of social work and director of the School of Social Work’s Center for International Social Work, runs the program in Romania. Her students spend the first part of their visit together, visiting community centers, schools, and social service organizations as a group. Then, they are placed individually with one of those agencies for two weeks.
Davis, who has studied and worked in Romania for 20 years, hopes to extend the service learning component from two to four weeks next year and eventually a few months.
Students and faculty say their hosts – local organizations, families, universities, and ordinary citizens – welcome them with open arms and look forward to having as many of them as they can each summer. For the students, the impact can be profound.
As part of the Rutgers program in Cochabamba in 2008, Carolyn Selheim, then sophomore, produced a video about unlicensed street vendors called ambulantes. She was struck not only by the poverty but by the disproportionate way it affected women, who made up about three quarters of the street vendors.
“I learned how difficult it is to have an impact on that poverty,” she said.
But last year, she came back. Enveloped by the city’s noise and dirt, she said to herself, “This is the filthiest place I’ve ever lived in. And I’m so glad to be back!”
She graduated in January 2011 and now works as a fundraiser for Pro Mujer, a nonprofit organization that provides health services, teaches business skills, and offers micro financing to poor women in five Latin American countries, including Bolivia.
A history major and member of the class of 2012, Aleksandra Odzakovic has been accepted to the Rutgers Graduate School of Education and plans to matriculate there. But her experience in Romania this summer has inspired her to pursue a master’s degree in social work as well, and return to Eastern Europe.
The architecture, the food, and the attitude of the people in Cluj, where she worked in a home for the elderly, reminded her of Bosnia, where she spent her early childhood.
“I see myself working and living in Romania or Bosnia,” she said. “I am extremely attracted to the possibilities that these countries possess. Despite the strife they have endured, the people still see a light at the end of the tunnel. My goal is to help as many people as I can get to that light.”