Service learning in Guatemala: Who learned the most?

One of our students making books with girls at a free clinic

In January of this year, a colleague and I served as faculty sponsors for a service learning trip to Guatemala. Our college has run this trip, various times per year, for several years, but it was the first time that students from our, rather new Speech-Language Pathology Department went along. Of the six students who volunteered to go, five had brand-new, completely blank passports.

I tried to remember when I had been in this situation, and realized I was a similar age. My first year in college, I traveled to Coyhaique, Chile to visit a friend I had met when she was an exchange student at my high school. Her family invited me to stay with them for the month of January. I organized the trip as an independent study project, and even received some funding. That month in Chile, my first international experience, certainly changed my life, as I know Guatemala did for my students.

I'll follow up with a touristy post about our home base, La Antigua Guatemala, but here I want to reflect on the service learning experience: highlights, challenges, and its impact on my students.

The big question was: What could we possibly do in one week that would have a sustainable impact on the communities we would visit? We didn't want the trip to be an exercise in "voluntourism". While Nursing and Physical Therapy students provided free clinics in rural communities, the SLP team decided to focus on literacy enrichment. We joined our colleagues in the clinics; however, instead of medical supplies and remedies, we carried suitcases full of Spanish language children's books donated by generous publishers. We read and wrote stories with children of all ages and gave all the books away to children and schools. Most importantly, we developed positive relationships with schools that wish to partner with us in future projects. We will return in October.

Exploring books and making books: Even the older kids got into it!

The days were long, and every night, my colleague and I would stay up late, watching a melodramatic telenovela and brainstorming ways to "fix" the many "problems" that we observed:

1. How could Guatemala increase access to education in the rural, indigenous areas, especially for girls?   
2. How could these communities address the needs of young adults who want to go back to school? I met an 18 year old young woman who had left school at an early age. It was her greatest regret. As she got older, she wanted to go back, but family responsibilities prevented it.  
3. How could there be better access to health care in general, and in particular, in the areas of women's health and family planning?
4. What about clean water and food? In these communities, people are spending hours carrying water and have constant food insecurity. Considering Maslow's hierarchy, if a family is struggling to meet these basic needs, education and its expenses will not make the priority list.   

More than 1,000 tortillas were given away at a free lunch attended by about 500 children weekly 

I have no doubt that our students were pondering these questions as well, and also trying to reconcile the hard injustice of economic inequality, and the resulting, gigantic differences in their lives at home and the lives of the people they were meeting everyday in Guatemala. At any rate, the students were undaunted. Two of them turned out to be quite proficient in Spanish, and the others used whatever they had and learned more. They had all practiced reading in Spanish and asking questions about picture books and stories. They were fully engaged, all the time, interacting with the children and, at times, their parents. They got a glimpse of Latin American culture: the warmth and friendliness, strong sense of family and community, and resourcefulness. For all of them, it was a transformative learning experience.

Talking about books at a clinic