Beyond Borders

BEYOND BORDERS TEN YEARS OF INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING

By Nancy Harper, with translations by Luis Juarez, photography by Nathan Beninger and Glen Lombard

“We’re very reluctant to go down the path of ‘change the world.’

It’s not about parachuting in and putting a student on the ground and having them do something just for the sake of doing something.”

—Glen Lombard, Director, Office of Student Experience

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Beyond Borders

Erika Toffelmire knows what it means to serve. She’s been there. She gets it.

The months Erika spent in India with Beyond Borders may not have changed the world, but they changed her for good.

And that’s exactly the point.

Beyond Borders exists so that St. Jerome’s University students can translate their desire to make a difference into meaningful engagement, rather than to parachute in somewhere just to shake things up.

“Instead of a wide swath of colour on a canvas, my impact more closely resembled a dot on a Jackson Pollock painting,” says Toffelmire, a 2012 graduate of Peace and Conflict Studies.

“I can’t say that I made much of a difference. My being there for a few months didn’t change anything. But I also can’t ignore that my words and actions didn’t exist in a vacuum. I know they somehow affected the experiences of others.

“I may never fully understand the situations or struggles of other people, but I can always support and encourage them, and walk with them on their life journey,” adds Toffelmire, now 25. “I believe this is ultimately what development and peace work should be about. Beyond Borders helped me learn that I wanted to serve people. I started to see there were ways I could do that, and ways I couldn’t. It shouldn’t be about me saying ‘This is the way we do this; this is the right thing to do.’ ” It’s an attitude and approach that SJU has tried hard to foster — and clearly it’s working.

“Experiential learning at St. Jerome’s University is not about being an experience junkie,” says interim Vice President Academic and Dean Scott Kline. “It’s not a type of extreme education for students amped up on Red Bull. At SJU, experiential learning opportunities are intended to help students discover the humanity in those living on the margins of society.

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“Many of our students come out of our experiential learning programs with the sense that they know less than they did going in. There’s humbleness in knowing ‘I don’t know everything’ and ‘I don’t really understand the complexity of the way things are’ and ‘I have a lot to learn.’

“When you have that kind of experience, you can’t shake it,” Kline says. “You can’t leave it behind. It permanently and fundamentally alters the way you exist in the world.”

SJU’s experiential learning programs challenge students to examine their own preconceived notions about the world because, when they do, important questions surface: about gender inequality, food security, ecological sustainability, international volunteerism, tourism, and traditional approaches to development and nongovernmental organizational work (NGOs).

As students seek to address these questions, they approach whatever they do with renewed — and enlightened — purpose.

Glen Lombard, Director, Office of Student Experience, adds: “Many of our students come from a place of privilege and begin to appreciate while they are abroad that with privilege comes responsibility. Our trips are not about changing the world. They are about meeting people on their terms, and building understanding through meaningful dialogue and relationships.”

Jenna Bott, also a graduate of Peace and Conflict Studies, agrees. She spent nearly four months in Uganda with Beyond Borders, and the experience changed her life.

“They need help, but not in the way we might think they do,” Bott says. “Really, you take far more out of these experiences than you can possibly give. They make you want to work toward the benefit of others and learn more, wherever you are and wherever you go.”

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Beyond Borders International Service Learning opportunities can challenge students’ perspectives on issues such as gender inequality and roles.

ON THE GROUND WITH BEYOND BORDERS The three-credit Beyond Borders program, which consists of two terms of on-campus course work and a 90-day placement abroad, is a great primer for students looking to do international development work.

Students get involved in anything from hands-on agriculture and community development to recreational programs and mobile health clinics. The idea is to actively engage them in projects that can bring about a greater awareness of issues like food production, poverty, education, and human rights.

This year, Beyond Borders will reach a noteworthy milestone: 10 years of international experiential learning and more than 150 Beyond Borders alumni.

In 2005, SJU began partnering with the non-profit Intercordia Canada, which served as placement coordinator for SJU students. Another partner, World University Service of Canada, helped provide education, employment, and empowerment opportunities.

Spring 2006 saw the first cohort of students placed in Belize, Ecuador, Honduras, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ukraine, and Canada.

Expansion continued in 2007 with a formal bilateral agreement between SJU and Ternopil National Pedagogical University in Ukraine. The agreement built on the previous year’s placement and created opportunities for students to engage in further meaningful learning at an Internat — a Ukrainian orphanage — for young women with disabilities.

In 2010-2011, Beyond Borders expanded further with Reach Out Mbuya (Uganda) and the Esperanza Project (Dominican Republic), while in 2012 it added Caring

Partners Global (Kenya) and PROASSA and Café Femenino (Peru).

From 2012 to 2014, Beyond Borders further extended the possibilities with partnerships with SMILES Africa and NEST (both in Kenya), as well as Haiti Partners (in Port-au-Prince) and Iko Poran (Brazil).

In 2014 they expanded the program once again, by offering a double cohort, which will allow students to travel in the spring or the fall.

Today, the University maintains direct relationships with our Beyond Borders placement partners.

“By working directly with international partners, SJU ensures that mutually beneficial relationships are being forged over a number of years,” Lombard explains.

“These relationships are the foundation for a successful and sustainable program that ensures consistently exceptional student experiences from year to year.

“Both SJU and its partners are on the same page about the long-term goals of the program — goals that support the needs and priorities of the NGOs as well as the learning objectives of our students.”

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International Service Learning participants can travel to a host of different countries around the world; Elizabeth Chand, Kate McNamara, Bill Lin, Emily Butzakowski, Yasmeen Nematt, and Sam Stuckless traveled to Peru with SJU in Peru.

COMMUNITIES AND STUDENTS: A MUTUAL PARTNERSHIP

orphanage, which cares for girls with physical and mental disabilities.

“We’re very reluctant to go down the path of ‘change the world,’ ” Lombard says. “It’s not about parachuting in and putting a student on the ground and having them do something that’s only meaningful for them, just for the sake of doing something.

The orphanage has been a Beyond Borders partner for 10 years, and although people with disabilities still experience widespread stigma in Ukraine, the SJU presence is starting to effect real change.

“Our partners are consistently impressed with the quality and maturity of our students: their ability to integrate and really immerse themselves in the culture, to listen to what’s needed, not imposing, and then actually producing some pretty phenomenal results.

“We’re not telling the organization what they need. We teach our students to listen. As our partners in Peru say, change comes poco y poco — or little by little. Little by little, our students are walking that path with our partners abroad.”

That kind of incremental change is happening right now at the Ukrainian 26

Beyond Borders

“Our students understand that people with disabilities are fully human and need to be treated as such. Isolating them is dehumanizing,” Kline explains.

“Over time, incrementally, what you see is the students at the university in Ukraine starting to ask: ‘Why would Canadian students come and stay at this orphanage?

Why would anyone else in the world want to do that?’ Now they’re starting to say, ‘Well, wait a second, there’s a need here in our own country and if someone else is interested in this, maybe it’s something we should be interested in.’ Eventually they think, ‘They’re actually in it with us and they seem to be sticking it out.’ ”

ROOTED IN A CATHOLIC TRADITION OF SERVICE The preferential option for the poor and vulnerable is a basic principle of Catholic social teaching and the moral foundation underlying Beyond Borders. In essence, the option for the poor and vulnerable compels us to create conditions for marginalized voices to be heard, and to ask how social, political, and economic actions affect the most vulnerable. It is based on the premise that justice and peace are collective pursuits within the human community. Through Beyond Borders, students get the chance to explore how they can help build just, compassionate, and inclusive societies.

“Our experiential programs invite students to put their knowledge, skills, and education to work for a more just and peaceable world,” Kline says. “What we’re engaged in is not charity. These are not mission trips. We’re in other communities to establish ongoing relationships with people who are not usually considered leaders, power brokers, or global difference-makers. We are there in solidarity with them as part of our collective pursuit of justice, peace, and mutual well-being.”

TALKING THE TALK, WALKING THE WALK Two people who understand that philosophy perhaps better than anyone are Isabel Uriarte Latorre and her husband Victor Rojas.

Years ago Uriarte Latorre and Rojas had been trying to help Peruvian coffee producers improve their farming techniques and organize into collectives so they could earn fair market prices for their products.

It wasn’t enough. Intermediaries had been setting prices without considering the true production costs facing small-scale farmers.

So Uriarte Latorre and Rojas founded PROASSA for the simple reason of ensuring producers receive fair market price for their coffee.

St. Jerome’s University President Katherine Bergman and PROASSA founder Isabel Uriarte Latorre.

Today, PROASSA is an umbrella organization that provides support in the form of merchandising, business management, and social and environmental responsibility.

Having reached out to more than 1,500 marginalized, small-scale farmers in communities across northern Peru, Uriarte Latorre and Rojas are helping to make lasting social and economic changes.

CHALLENGING GENDER ROLES To address not only global inequality but also the continued marginalization of women, PROASSA has established a partnership with Café Femenino, a brand of coffee made exclusively by women and marketed as fair trade and organic.

The intention is to help women acquire the knowledge, experience, and education they need to be successful producers in their own right.

Prior to the Café Femenino experience, all the coffee a Peruvian family produced was sold by the man of the house. The perception that only men could be breadwinners gave them the right to manage and spend household income without consulting their Beyond Borders

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wives — even though research has shown that once women in developing countries acquire economic power, they use that power to improve the lives of their children.

Now more women are educating their daughters, seeking executive positions in their co-operatives, and changing the future of their communities.

Uriarte Latorre says it’s just one of the many ways Peruvian communities are benefiting from sustainable farming — and one of the ways young Canadians are being challenged to see the world differently.

“The students ... learn very important lessons,” Uriarte Latorre says. “They are able to understand the sacrifices realized by coffee producers in adverse conditions, but even more so, that the producers work with dignity to produce healthy products that do not harm the environment. This experience strengthens a student’s desire to act in solidarity with Peru’s rural and Andean populations. They will value the products even more than they already did, and go on to promote the consumption of these products wherever they may end up after graduation.”

It’s a win-win for both student and coffee grower.

“Coffee producers who receive support from people of different countries become very enthusiastic as they realize that people around the world care about their situation,” Uriarte Latorre adds. “They realize that they are not alone, and that every day the world becomes more and more connected.”

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Beyond Borders

THE CHANCELLOR JOHN SWEENEY AWARD Isabel Uriarte Latorre and Victor Rojas’s story is more than a genuine success in sustainable development; it’s also award-worthy right here in Waterloo.

This October, Uriarte Latorre and Rojas will receive the 2015 Chancellor John Sweeney Award in recognition of their 40 years of selfless service.

Inspired by the legacy of the first lay Chancellor at St. Jerome’s University, the award is presented each year to an exemplary leader living a life rooted in the values of truth, faith, and justice.

“Isabel and Victor are, to the very core, people who are interested in serving others,” Glen Lombard says. “Their entire existence has been centred on ensuring the advancement of other people.

And our students are going there and consistently having absolutely phenomenal learning experiences while being immersed in a grassroots movement. They see Isabel as a figurehead in these communities.

Even the men bow down to her.

She’s a powerful voice of reason, change, and influence.”

She’s also one of the reasons that experiential learning at St. Jerome’s is so powerful, and why so many students will keep putting themselves out there … for the next 10 years and beyond.