As I start my first year in Graduate School for International Studies at the University of Denver and my job as a Community- Engaged Fellow at CCESL, I can’t help but wonder how I got to where I am now and the knowledge I have gathered that I can utilize during my time at CCESL.
Really the direction that I am taking in my life now came from what I learned in my year long service learning and study abroad experience in Bengaluru(Bangalore), India. Nestled in South India, this city of over ten million was a big leap from my small community college in a small town in Louisiana. With only an associates of General Studies under my belt, I had no idea how to perceive and understand this new world and culture around me, but with an open mind I dove in.
After several weeks of classes and study about the purpose and methods of service learning and volunteering, we chose the organizations we would be spending our semester at. Christ University, the college we were studying at in India, already had a successful service learning program for the students called Centre for Social Action (CSA). This program defined itself as a, “Students Movement for a Humane and Just Society where student communities are sensitized on various issues affecting the poor and the marginalized sections of society.”They did so by helping provide infrastructure, education, and services for a marginalized (slum) community in Bengaluru. This is where I completed the bulk of my service learning.
By spreading out my time between a daycare that allowed women to hold jobs outside of the home in low income families, An after school library where kids could spend and hour or two after school practicing their english and reading skills, and an on campus recycling center. While all provided me with knowledge on what was needed or important to a community and how to effectively work with and within a community, I was most inspired by the recycling center. The recycling center on campus was most impressive simply because it hit so many target issues at once. It employed mostly lower income women form marginalized communities, training them and for those with children providing scholarships for their education. It created a zero waste campus, where all of the campus garbage was either recycled into notebooks, folders, poster boards, etc. or composted. And most importantly it allowed creative expression of the culture these women and their community belong to. So often in development programs, their is a one track plan modeled after western societies and culture that demands changes fro developing communities with little knowledge or concern for their thoughts or preservation of their culture.
What I learned from India was sympathy of poor communities does nearly nothing to help those in poverty. Looking down on them does nothing but set manmade restrictions on their capabilities. I learned how little the west actually knows about other communities and how they develop and no amount of formal education will teach you what merely listening to those effected by poverty, or lack of education, or health issues, or violence etc. No issue or culture exists within a vacuum and it is important to understand the connections between all aspects of a community in order to truly benefit from service learning. Like the recycling center I hope to be able to study the connections between issues being worked on at CCESL and help create programs or come up with solutions that can positively affect more than one aspect of my assignment. I don’t have all the answers and no matter how many books I read or how many degrees I have, I will never have all the answers. But I can listen and I can work with the community and with scholars at DU and I can be an experienced and involved member of the Denver community.
-Shay’la Liller
Shay'la Liller 