Service-Learning Thailand

The University of Georgia

Office of Service-Learning

REflections Global Service-Learning Program

The reflective journal is a key part of the service-learning experience that is often used to assess students’ work, and as way to encourage critical thinking about connections between service experiences and academic content. The following are excerpts from student journals from the Thailand program as they using writing to process new experiences, learning, and the meaning of global citizenship.

“Working with the Thai students has been extremely educational for both the Americans and the Thais.

At the beginning of the servicelearning project, the Americans took over immediately bouncing ideas all around. However, the Thais ended up with the better ideas after the Americans slowed down a little and started listening.

At the end of the project, the Americans and the Thais were working really well together.”

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“We talked to a guy in a village who was concerned about global warming, but he felt like he was only one person. He felt it was the government’s duty. Well, we have the opportunity to make things happen in America. We have freedom of speech . . . We can see the issue and force our government officials to take action, or get them out! That’s democracy – right?

But, we need education on global warming problems and solutions on how to solve it.

It’s embarrassing, because I’m a 4th year at UGA, for the most part a well-educated person, and I’ve heard the problems, but not feasible solutions.

Now I can do what I think is right to start help solving these problems.”

Pratt Cassity, pcassity@uga.edu Shannon Wilder, swilder@uga.edu David Gattie, dgattie@engr.uga.edu

www.uga.edu/thailand

The University of Georgia Office of Service-Learning

THAIland Sustainable Service-Learning 2008 The University of Georgia

Bringing it Home:

going global to get local The chance to observe local practices in a variety of settings was an important aspect of the students’ preparation for a community revitalization project during the second part of the project in Bangkok. Like academic service learning courses on campus, global service learning programs in international settings are the result of planning that includes partners on the ground, opportunities for students to present what they’ve learned and ongoing reflection.

Addressing complex community problems through interdisciplinary service-learning

Global Service-Learning Program

The rapid pace of development in Southeast Asia, alongside its centuries-old ways, allows for unique learning opportunities that bear more than a passing resemblance to situations back home.

And according to program director Pratt Cassity, a public service faculty member in Landscape Architecture, this is exactly the point. “As much as we are able to assist local communities, other international students and to make a difference, it’s what we bring back with us that’s at the heart of what we’re doing.”

“We went there thinking we were going to show them something about sustainability,” says Philip Daugherty, a third year engineering student and Iraq War veteran. “The truth is I’m still learning from that experience.”

The Thailand Service-Learning Study Abroad Program, which ran during May-June 2007, involved a solid crosssection of students from UGA and encapsulated ecological and sustainability issues that challenged the limits of their engineering, anthropology, environmental design, business and biology backgrounds. The collaboration involved students from UGA, Chiang Mai University in the north of Thailand and Kasetsart University in Bangkok.

After an initial visit to Chiang Mai University, students spent ten days in the Samoeng watershed, observing, documenting and learning to understand the sustainable communities of the rural north of the country. These communities were comprised of individual farms and small collectives self-organized under an environmental management order from His Majesty King Adulyadej as a way of disseminating sustainable agricultural practices to its thousands of villages.

“The way they use everything available, including tools we overlook, like gravity for irrigation systems or wind drafts for ventilation, left a real impression on me- it’s not just making do, but discovering new ways to be creative and innovative using what we have around us,” said Liza Thomas, a fifth year engineering student.

The communities included one orphanage, where longterm sustainable practices had been incorporated as an active part of raising the children. The time with these children and the connectivity, knowledge and practice of sustainability between generations, linking people with their land, had a profound effect upon the students.