During my first winter break as a UC student, I spent 8 days in Guatemala on a service learning trip with 13 other students from Serve Beyond Cincinnati--a student group that engages students in multicultural world service experiences. On our trip, we worked with Homes from the Heart, a nonprofit organization dedicated to building homes for sustainable communities in Central America and Haiti. As part of our project, we helped in the construction of wood-burning stoves, chicken coops, and the roof of a new house for a family whose previous house had fallen in. My major focus of the trip, however, was to learn about the relationship between cultural understanding and effective and sustainable community building--in line with the Community Engagement Thematic Area of the Honors Program. I interacted with and learned from the local population, immersed myself in Guatemalan culture, and sought to learn how a better understanding of culture and the adoption of a reciprocity-infused relationship could create more effective, lasting change.
I chose to engage in this experience for multiple reasons. Primarily, I was interested in developing an understanding on how cultural awareness and community engagement can be utilized in tandem to create more viable long-term solutions. In my Exploring Health Professions course prior to travel to Guatemala, we read a great deal about the "White Savior Complex" and Voluntourism, two concepts which feature citizens of more well-to-do nations travelling abroad with the wrong intentions when it comes to service. Whether is was an avoidance of a superiority-infused mindset or staying away from deviations from the true purpose of international service, I took steps during my preparation for and stay in Guatemala to make this trip worth a great deal more than any taken with these outlooks. Other minor focus areas included implementing the learning I have gained from my Spanish minor in a practical setting, as I have long sought to practice my fluency in a location where I can be truly immersed in culture in a way that no classroom can mimic. In addition, due to my involvement with sustainability efforts on campus, I set out to learn more about how sustainable communities were built from the experts who were working with us from the Homes from the Heart organization. Overall, the experience was an insightful and rewarding one--I learned a great deal, met some wonderful people, and was immersed in a culture which shaped my understanding of the world and its many inhabitants in a positive manner.
As far as a main takeaway, I really came back with an appreciation of how understanding someone on a human level really helps build the empathy that makes partnerships strong. When you can better understand someone and thus better relate to them, any partnership you set up with them will be more imbued with respect and therefore more effective. Going forward, I hope to transfer many of the things that I learned into practical application in my daily life. For example, I am seeking to implement a more rhythmic sleep-wake cycle to have a more healthy and balanced baseline upon which to build. After taking this step to help myself before I can help others, I will take the lessons about reciprocal relationships that I learned and bring the back to campus via the student groups and initiatives--like Student Government, SustainUC, and the Crossroad Health Center--with which I am involved.
I chose to engage in this experience for multiple reasons. Primarily, I was interested in developing an understanding on how cultural awareness and community engagement can be utilized in tandem to create more viable long-term solutions. In my Exploring Health Professions course prior to travel to Guatemala, we read a great deal about the "White Savior Complex" and Voluntourism, two concepts which feature citizens of more well-to-do nations travelling abroad with the wrong intentions when it comes to service. Whether is was an avoidance of a superiority-infused mindset or staying away from deviations from the true purpose of international service, I took steps during my preparation for and stay in Guatemala to make this trip worth a great deal more than any taken with these outlooks. Other minor focus areas included implementing the learning I have gained from my Spanish minor in a practical setting, as I have long sought to practice my fluency in a location where I can be truly immersed in culture in a way that no classroom can mimic. In addition, due to my involvement with sustainability efforts on campus, I set out to learn more about how sustainable communities were built from the experts who were working with us from the Homes from the Heart organization. Overall, the experience was an insightful and rewarding one--I learned a great deal, met some wonderful people, and was immersed in a culture which shaped my understanding of the world and its many inhabitants in a positive manner.
As far as a main takeaway, I really came back with an appreciation of how understanding someone on a human level really helps build the empathy that makes partnerships strong. When you can better understand someone and thus better relate to them, any partnership you set up with them will be more imbued with respect and therefore more effective. Going forward, I hope to transfer many of the things that I learned into practical application in my daily life. For example, I am seeking to implement a more rhythmic sleep-wake cycle to have a more healthy and balanced baseline upon which to build. After taking this step to help myself before I can help others, I will take the lessons about reciprocal relationships that I learned and bring the back to campus via the student groups and initiatives--like Student Government, SustainUC, and the Crossroad Health Center--with which I am involved.