Is the Self-Serving Nature of Service Learning Unavoidable?
Photo by Brooke Isaacs
Millennials and young people tend to spend their money on experiences rather than material objects now more than ever, and college students are no exception. This rise in demand for experiences has been a long time coming and college campuses rapidly adapted to meet it. Many campuses responded by creating programs that engage students in new and different ways, be it through travel opportunities, workshops, symposiums, or modernized study abroad programs. Colorado State University has been meeting this demand for quite some time through the Alternative Spring Break program.
The Alternative Spring Break program, run through Colorado State University’s Student Leadership, Involvement, and Community Engagement (SLiCE) office, works to connect students with opportunities to understand and learn about social justice issues across the United States. The program takes groups of students over the University’s spring break to several cities across the country to work with local community engagement and service organizations that focus on a social issue that is unique to the area.
The program is built on the concept of service learning. The National Service Learning Clearinghouse and Vanderbilt University defines service learning as “a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities.”
CSU’s Alternative Spring Break program is unique in its take on service learning in that it focuses on the impact that its students create – intentionally or unintentionally – when entering spaces and communities that are not their own. Social justice is a core focus within their service learning lens. Student leaders and professional staff prepare and educate participants to enter a community, help where they can, and leave, having attempted to cause the least amount of harm possible.
The idea of a service learning trip that seeks to cause the least harm while still “lending a hand” seemed impossible to me; a living oxymoron. When I committed to working with a trip that focused on environmental racism in New Orleans, Louisiana, I anticipated an experience that would provide a predominantly white university the opportunity to tout social justice values and provide students with white savior complex tendencies the opportunity to “help others.”
My commitment to the trip prompted extensive internal debate about the ethical and moral implications of service learning and its connection to college students. My thoughts and concerns boiled down to one main question, both about myself and about the intentions of others: is it possible to do service in a community that is not my own and avoid doing damage or harm to it?
Leading up to the trip’s March departure, our small group of New Orleans-bound students attended regular meetings to discuss the history of the city, the social issues affecting it, the organizations we would be working with, and the geographic features affecting the city’s access to resources. The initial meetings discussed the lasting effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans, even 14 years after the storm, followed by extensive discussion about the various institutions and practices that have enabled environmental racism in the area.
While in New Orleans, we worked with two community engagement and service agencies, Grow Dat Youth Farm and lowernine.org. Grow Dat emphasizes community engagement and youth empowerment through farming and a youth leadership program. Lowernine.org works to bring the original residents of the Lower Ninth Ward, one of the neighborhoods hit hardest by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, back into their homes, restore the damage done by fraudulent contractors, and stop the gentrification of the historically Black neighborhood. While Grow Dat’s work stretches across the city of New Orleans, lowernine.org’s work focuses solely on the Lower Ninth Ward.
Photo by Brooke Isaacs
Grow Dat’s youth empowerment and leadership program directly affects the young population in the area because it teaches real, transferable job skills as well as employing a large group of young people. The greater community reaps the benefits of the farm’s produce, as anyone in the area can stop by at any time and pick up fresh food for free. The produce is also sold at affordable farmer’s markets and is distributed through a new monthly subscription program.
Lowernine.org’s work directly impacts the residents of the Lower Ninth Ward every day. After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, there is still a population return rate to the neighborhood of only 36.7%, as of 2016. The service they are providing is catered specifically to those who were displaced from the Lower Ninth Ward following the flooding, and the organization does not work with those that are not originally from the area or that seek to gentrify the neighborhood.
The community engagement work and service ran by both of the agencies is commendable and very clearly creating true community impact every single day.
However, a group of college students from a predominantly white university that claims to value social justice are the ones presuming to do the volunteer work that each organization allows. The question remains: is it possible to do this “service” and avoid doing damage to the community? Or does having that initial thought of going to “help” a community that is not your own start the ball rolling towards inevitable harm?
It is important to define harm here. In this case, harm could include any unintended, negative impact that one brings to another by exerting their privilege in a community that was already managing before they arrived.
That being said, it may be impossible to ever know if this particular trip and group of students did any harm or good for the community in the Lower Ninth Ward or the city of New Orleans. Each organization we worked with greeted us with respect and thanked us for donating our time. The impact we made on each organization was tangible: we provided extra pairs of hands, free labor, and helped to alleviate the immense workload felt daily by both organizations. We could physically watch things move faster when there were more people working. But that’s surface-level.
When we examine the intersectionality of identities present – within the group of students, the organizations themselves, the overall communities – we must be more aware of who is present in what spaces in order to truly consider the big picture.
This group of students, genuine outsiders and non-natives to New Orleans, will truly never know if any harm was brought to the community through our presence. We were in New Orleans for one week and one week only. The two organizations we worked with have been there for years and will continue on just as they had been before we showed up. The people of New Orleans have been there for years and will continue on just as they have been before we showed up.
The concept of a service learning trip bringing change to a community is a farce. That kind of trip or service doesn’t really exist. Service learning trips like those of the Alternative Spring Break program are successful in providing education for students and providing volunteers for local agencies. Beyond that scope, it’s hard to know whether or not harm was done or if a tangible change was made. And that’s okay, because it isn’t for those participants to decide to make a change in a community that is not their own.
This is just one trip, one group of students, and one year of the program. The Alternative Spring Break program takes students on approximately 14 different trips each year and has done so for many years. Each trip is different, each group of students is different, and more importantly, each community is different. Every year there is potential for harm. That fact is unavoidable. There is also a potential for good, even if that good is just providing support for the community agencies. The measurement of harm and the decision to make change in a community is not for the program and its’ participants to decide.