Unique Book Shows Benefits of WCU’s Journeys to South Africa
Twenty years ago, the West Chester University Honors College established an international
service-learning program that took students to South Africa for two weeks to conduct
service outreach and data collection. On 12 trips in alternating years, WCU students
and several faculty and staff worked with the same three non-profit organizations
to help make and serve soup to school children; visit and comfort HIV/AIDS orphans;
and assist in an elementary school. The program became a model for other service-learning
programs in terms of establishing continuity and making a short trip impactful for
those visiting and those visited.
These students brought home more than just photos. They returned with new perspectives and sometimes new academic and career pursuits, notes Victoria Tischio, WCU professor of English, who completed four of these journeys. She has compiled students’ reflections, notes, research, and photos into a recently released book: Journeys to South Africa: Reflections on 20 Years of Short-term Service Learning. The chapters explore how students learn and the various ways communities benefit from these projects.
She shared the ethos of the book: “We intended to give something more back, something lasting.”
Academically, the book provides scholars with more descriptive data and analysis than is currently available regarding international service-learning experiences. That information includes interviews conducted with host communities, surveys of recent student travelers, interviews with students who participated in the early years of the program, and students’ travel journal entries.
Royalties from book sales are earmarked for the three non-profit organizations that the Honors College visited and assisted on each trip: H.E.L.P. Ministries Soup Kitchen, Nkosi’s Haven, and Nederberg Primary School.
One example of how students were transformed: After the 2006 trip, three participating students returned and launched Aid to South Africa, an Honors College student-run fundraiser that became an annual event, several times having Cecil Begbie, who established H.E.L.P. Ministries Soup Kitchen, join the event in person on campus.
Some students changed their majors or added minors to incorporate study of social justice issues after witnessing still-visible remnants of apartheid. Others found careers in philanthropy, activism, and human rights.
“Difficult concepts and experiences of poverty and hunger effected the biggest breakthroughs in students,” Tischio noted.
An excerpt* from Tischio’s three student co-authors (now alumni) who served as volume editors, Camryn Carwll ’20, CJ Deskie ’22, and Dunya Markovic ’22, illustrates the transformative value of the students’ experiences:
“For all of the hardship that we saw in some of the townships and heard about in the stories of those we met along the way, there were little pockets of joy and success. While progress is difficult to measure and maintain, and even more difficult to see during a short-term visit, the end result can be life-altering for those in need by helping ensure that vital nonprofits continue to exist. Progress may not look the way we would like it. It may not happen on the timetable we prefer. However, learning to value the messiness of progress and the role we can play in that slow process toward justice is part of what we took away from our experiences in South Africa and that lesson will continue to influence our lives into the future.”
Tischio continues to conduct service with Nederberg Primary School in the form of virtual storybook videos and read alongs with their second- and third-grade students.
Two other faculty contributed to the book: Peter Loedel, professor of political science and current interim department chair, and Kevin Dean, the former Honors College director who established the South Africa program.
Journeys to South Africa: Reflections on 20 Years of Short-term Service Learning is available through major booksellers and online. Visit this site for blog entries and links to social media.
* Excerpt from Journeys to South Africa: Reflections on 20 Years of Short-term Service Learning, Chapter 4: “The Messiness of Progress: Lessons from 20 Years of International Service Learning Trips to South Africa” by Camryn Carwll, CJ Deskie, and Dunya Markovic. (Peter Lang, 2023)