The True Cost of Service Learning is Damage to Local Communities
Photo by Brooke Isaacs
What we know as service must be redefined. Is it possible to do “service” without causing harm to the intended population?
On a hot, rainy afternoon in March 2017, 18-year-old Colorado State University freshman Rachel Probst listened in to an English class offered to refugees at the International Rescue Committee (IRC) office in Atlanta, Georgia.
The class held session in a cold, institutional room, but the atmosphere at the table in the center provided a warm welcome.
“I felt welcomed right away, which was strange because I was entering their space… They did the same thing at one point in their lives [by coming to the United States], and they probably didn’t get that same welcoming feeling,” Rachel said. “So it was really awesome to see how they included me in that space.”
Rachel had always known that she wanted to work with people. Even as a child she knew her calling was in social work, although she didn’t have a name for her future major yet. Her altruistic personality and dedication to social justice are what drew her to this particular Alternative Spring Break in Atlanta, Georgia, offered through CSU’s Student Leadership, Involvement and Community Engagement office. The trip focuses on refugees in the United States and the struggles they experience every day on their paths to citizenship or their journeys home.
As the rain began to clear, Rachel stepped outside to study with one of the IRC’s regular visitors. Together, they reviewed study guides and practiced English. As they joked and become more acquainted, she found herself beginning to feel uncomfortable with calling what she was doing “service.”
“It just breaks my heart that people have to live in situations like this and they think it’s normal.” Rachel said.
The afternoon wore on and the heat began to subside. In between study sessions, one of Rachel’s fellow Alternative Break participants introduced her to an IRC participant that was seeking refuge from his home in Africa.
“He started to show me all these photos of his home, and he [kept saying] ‘I love it there, it’s so beautiful.’ What I didn’t realize is that [with] all these refugees, people think they’re running away to get out of their situation, but the reality is they want to return home. They don’t want to stay,” Rachel said. “[People] assume that [refugees] want to just colonize somewhere else when that’s not true at all. The main goal of all these refugee camps and all the work that international… organizations are doing is to make their home safe so they can return back to it. That is the ultimate goal, and a majority of the population does not understand that.”
Night had fallen by the time she left the IRC. The ride back to the lodging for the Alternative Break participants was quiet, and Rachel began to doubt the integrity of the trip. Service itself had become a paradox.
For 18 years, all Rachel had hoped to do was help people, and the experience unfolding before her eyes had thrown her off-balance in less than 24 hours. Her state of cognitive dissonance continued to deepen and she found herself questioning everything that had once been certain. How can people refer to helping others as service? Is it possible to do any service without harming the affected populations?
“You can be there for a person and ‘help them,’ but it’s really [the person] that’s doing all the work,” Rachel said. “You’re just there to encourage them and support them. We should not be taking credit for all of the hard work and resiliency that they have, because I feel like people can tend to do that when it comes to service trips… They were already doing [all the work] before you got there.”
That’s the thing about service. It’s dangerous to enter a population or community with the thought of helping people, especially when that thought is overshadowed by the idea of changing lives. Chances are that no one in that community asked anyone to interrupt their lives and “help” them.
Is this idea of “service” actually helping anyone, or is it just a way to alleviate the guilt of privileged college students?
The Alternative Break program was designed with the hope that young college students would get involved with social justice issues occurring around the United States as well as globally. The trips take students to their selected location around the country and immerse them in these experiences to help guide them in becoming informed citizens and activists within their own communities.
However, like many others, Rachel went into her first Alternative Break with the thought that she would be directly changing someone’s life. This approach set her up for failure and immediately showed her how this preconceived notion of “helping people” can negatively impact a community.
“I don’t think I changed any lives. I [may have] impacted lives, but how they take that impact… [is about] what they do with that change. [People should] be open to the fact that you’re not going to change [someone’s] life. These people, the people you’re talking to and meeting, were doing life just fine before you got there. You are simply there to observe and take in what you’re experiencing… There is such a balance in creating more harm than good.”
The question still remains: is this “service” just another self-serving way to alleviate the guilt of social justice-minded college students? Can it prove to be educational and not damaging to the local population?
The answer is not a call that can be made by Rachel, another Alternative Break participant, or anyone else for that matter.
By calling something “service learning” or having the intention to help someone that never asked for it, damage is inherently done. In the end, the only people that could tell the truth about whether or not damage was done to the community would be the members of that community. And even then, each person has a different perspective and experience that is valid in and of itself.
So, where do social justice-minded individuals go from here? Having difficult conversations about service and the sometimes negative consequences associated with it can educate the groups of people that hope to “help” others. The Alternative Break program is by no means perfect, and though its intentions are flawed, they remain in the right place. But this line between “service” and damage is an incredibly thin one to walk, and in truth, Rachel’s experience is no different than the many others that came before her. Intention, no matter how good, does not always affect the true outcome.
Originally posted to Medium in 2018.