“There’s some colonial in my postcolonial”: Community Development Workers’ Perspectives on Faith-based Service Learning in a Guatemalan Context

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-100
Author(s):  
Geraldine Balzer ◽  
Luke Heidebrecht
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
Learning Opportunities ◽  
Development Organization ◽  
Faith Tradition ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
The People ◽  
Global North ◽  
Development Workers ◽  
Mennonite Central Committee

Faith-based relief and development organization Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) has been involved in the country of Guatemala since 1976 when they responded to relief needs in light of the devastating earthquake at the time. Since then MCC has invested in a number of communities throughout Guatemala in various capacities, one of which has been the development of service and learning opportunities aimed at exposing and connecting students/participants in the global north with the people and issues within the global south. As researchers of service learning, who are also committed to a faith tradition and have participated in or have been in relationship with MCC in some capacity, we are interested in evaluating how their faith tradition has helped to both construct their practice as well as critique it. One of the aims of our research is to collaborate with MCC practitioners in assessing and examining their current practice of service/learning in Guatemala in an effort to discover ways in which they are creating opportunities for positive societal change – both in the lives of the student/ participants and the communities in Guatemala, while critiquing the traditional colonial and neocolonial approaches to development.

To Minister or Administer

2020 ◽  
pp. 139-186
Author(s):  
Ben Nobbs-Thiessen
Keyword(s):  
Central Committee ◽  
Global South ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
Orientation Program ◽  
International Agencies ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
Spatial Design ◽  
International Funding ◽  
Global Operations ◽  
Mennonite Central Committee

Across the Global South, missionary and religious organizations served as state proxies in “secular” modernization projects. In Bolivia, Protestants flocked to new colonization zones at the invitation of the MNR. This chapter explores the Methodist Mission Board and the Mennonite Central Committee (a North American relief agency). Each made Bolivia a center of its global operations and joined with several Maryknoll nuns in an improvised United Church Committee (CIU) in the wake of a devastating 1968 flood. The CIU would go on to administer the San Julián Project, the largest colonization program in Bolivian history during a period of authoritarian rule ushered in by General Hugo Banzer’s 1971 coup. Faith-based development practitioners worked on the ground with colonists, gained the confidence of Banzer, and channeled international funding. During that time, San Julián attracted a range of academics and planners who were drawn to its unique orientation program and spatial design. The chapter follows the trajectories of these mobile actors who leveraged their work in Bolivia into new roles with international agencies and NGOs across the Global South. These “go-betweens” crossed boundaries separating the revolutionary and the authoritarian, the secular and the sacred, and the frontier and the academy.

Understanding How Students Learn: Preparing Students to Become Professionals

2009 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-23
Author(s):  
Lizbeth Curme Stevens
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Communication Disorders ◽  
Learning Opportunities ◽  
Graduate Courses ◽  
Speech Language Pathologists ◽  
Community Partners ◽  
Scholarship Of Teaching ◽  
Academic Service Learning

Abstract The intent of this article is to share my research endeavors in order to raise awareness of issues relative to what and how we teach as a means to spark interest in applying the scholarship of teaching and learning to what we do as faculty in communication sciences and disorders (CSD). My own interest in teaching and learning emerged rather abruptly after I introduced academic service-learning (AS-L) into one of my graduate courses (Stevens, 2002). To better prepare students to enter our profession, I have provided them with unique learning opportunities working with various community partners including both speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and teachers who supported persons with severe communication disorders.

Community Service Learning with First Peoples

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brydie-Leigh Bartleet ◽  
Dawn Bennett ◽  
Anne Power ◽  
Naomi Sunderland
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Community Service ◽  
Music Educators ◽  
Learning Opportunities ◽  
Community Music ◽  
Culturally Appropriate ◽  
Community Service Learning ◽  
Intercultural Learning ◽  
Music Making ◽  
First Peoples

Community music educators worldwide face the challenge of preparing their students for working in increasingly diverse cultural contexts. These diverse contexts require distinctive approaches to community music-making that are respectful of, and responsive to, the customs and traditions of that cultural setting. The challenge for community music educators then becomes finding pedagogical approaches and strategies that both facilitate these sorts of intercultural learning experiences for their students and that engage with communities in culturally appropriate ways. This chapter unpacks these challenges and possibilities, and explores how the pedagogical strategy of community service learning can facilitate these sorts of dynamic intercultural learning opportunities. Specifically, it focuses on engaging with Australian First Peoples, and draws on eight years of community service learning in this field to inform the insights shared.

Service-Learning Opportunities for Preservice Music Teachers within Community Music Settings

2019 ◽  
pp. 641-667
Author(s):  
Jared R. Rawlings
Keyword(s):  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Service Learning ◽  
Teacher Development ◽  
Learning Opportunities ◽  
Music Teacher ◽  
Teacher Preparation Program ◽  
Community Music ◽  
Learning Program ◽  
Learning Opportunity ◽  
Learning Programs

Authentic teaching opportunities are important for all preservice teachers, and service-learning opportunities within community music settings support preservice music teacher development. The purpose of this chapter is to document a service-learning opportunity within a community music school and showcase the benefits and challenges of a partnership between a music teacher preparation program and this school. After defining service learning and describing how it is utilized in music teacher education, the chapter uncovers the following topics: establishing a community music partnership, designing a service-learning opportunity, and evaluating the outcomes of service-learning programs. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the implications of and recommendations for utilizing a multi-tier service-learning program alongside a preservice music teacher curriculum.

Development of the Sanitary and Epidemiological Service of the TASSR

1982 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
B. L. Jacobson ◽  
M. M. Gimadeev
Keyword(s):  
Central Committee ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Main Task ◽  
Housing Problem ◽  
Economic Problems ◽  
Soviet People ◽  
The People ◽  
National Economic ◽  
Social Tasks ◽  
General Secretary

The XXVI Congress of the CPSU defined the current national economic problems of the 1980s and the XI Five-Year Plan. As the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Comrade LI Brezhnev noted, "our country has entered a new decade, making it the main task to ensure the further growth of the welfare of Soviet people." The program for improving the well-being of the people in the XI Five-Year Plan provides for the solution of the housing problem, improvement of working, living and recreation conditions. Caring for the health of Soviet people in the coming years remains one of the most important social tasks.

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