I have a lot of qualms with the "hug an orphan" service trips which are frequently marketed in college campuses, most of which revolve around thoughtlessly enabling white, upper-class privilege. In these trips, which range from visiting orphanages in Guatemala to clinics in Tanzania, students are encouraged to "do good" by going abroad and imposing their notions of development on communities who lack the power to reject their advance. In the meantime, students can turn a blind eye to poverty in their own community and their role in perpetuating global inequality.
The students have a privilege afforded by their wealth that gives them-- and morally justifies-- their global mobility. On one hand, inexperienced college students are celebrated for "playing doctor" in small rural communities in Africa or attempting to build houses in Nicaragua. On the other, when people from other cultures come to the US to contribute to our economy-- much like undocumented workers from Latin America do-- we do everything we can to make them feel unwelcome.
Anyway, yesterday UVa's newspaper, The Cavalier Daily, published an editorial I wrote in response to a Youth- Nex study which found that UVa service-learning projects "succeed." The study defined success purely in terms of the project's impacts on students, ignoring the consequences for communities they visit. I refer to a 2011 Jefferson Public Citizens (JPC) project in Jamaica where the students tried to ecologically remodel a house without a building permit, resulting in the eviction of a woman (who then became homeless) and the demolition of the historic building. By the terms of the Youth-Nex study, the project "succeeded" because they students learned from their mistakes and improved their communication skills. The effects on the woman and her family & the historic district were ignored. If the University is serious about service-learning (which is an idea that needs more critical examination in the first place), then it needs to value the impacts of its projects on students and community members equally.
So, if you're interested, check out my editorial "Re-evaluating JPC's success." More importantly, let's change the conversation on service-learning projects so that it's not merely about the students. Giving a service isn't "good" in and of itself- there needs to be more consideration for what exactly the community is receiving, if they want it in the first place, and what the long term impact will be. And that should be the first priority.
Let's even reevaluate why there is such an impulse for these projects in the first place.
Congratulations on getting published in the Cavalier Daily! Glad to see you're still thinking critically and writing about things you care about. The world needs people like you to examine existing systems and make them better.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like the ethics of development projects are always complicated and interesting, and this certainly is a great case-study. I agree that any study that evaluates the success of a development project purely by how it helps the developers is missing the point.