Local or Global Service Learning?

This question was posed by an ESHA member in the discussion of Muddy Waters' presentation, "The World from Another Perspective: ESHA in Kenya," at the 2010 ESHA Conference:

Why would an independent elementary school get involved in a service learning project in Kenya when there are so many local opportunities to serve people in need?

My response, shared then but developed further over the weeks that have followed as I have talked with colleagues, read, and reflected:

The best of our service learning programs will go beyond the important goals of giving students meaningful, relationship-based, interdisciplinary experiences in helping the needy and of developing the understandings that come from helping others with fewer resources. Exemplary programs will have at their core the goals of developing our students' comprehension that basic human needs transcend place and of building their sense of both local and global citizenship in a context that is of mutual benefit for the members of both organizations involved.

Service on a variety of levels enriches understanding in other areas, of course. For young children, this includes supporting the emerging concept of simultaneously being present in a school, city, state, country, continent, and world; kindling an appreciation and interest in the breadth and richness of the world's cultures; and developing a working knowledge of world geography.

Christian Harth and Rev. Jennifer Deaton of St. Andrew's Episcopal School in Mississippi made a compelling presentation on this topic at the 2010 National Association of Episcopal Schools (NAES) Biennial Conference on November 19, the premises of which are offered in a recent article by Harth in Independent School magazine, "Going Glocal: Adaptive Education for Global and Local Citizenship" (Fall 2010). Harth stresses the importance of developing identities and connections to multiple communities. Borrowing a term from British sociologist Roland Robertson, he urges us to think of a "glocal" schoolhouse:

"While knowledge of Western heritage remains necessary, it grows less sufficient daily. Increasingly, all students should have awareness of, and appreciation for, cultures from around the world — near and far. Moreover, they need to understand their global and local contexts and the various levels in between."

Claudia

Photo:
"Nesting places," NAES Biennial Conference presentation, "Ubuntu, "Glocal" Service, and Educating 21st-Century Citizens in the Episcopal Tradition," 11/19/10
(Photo credit: Claudia Daggett)

The Samburu Sugar Sack

Several years ago, I purchased a messenger bag fashioned from a Vietnamese rice sack. I can't remember where I bought it, but I do remember feeling pretty good about contributing to the life of a Vietnamese woman, which I had done according to the nifty bag tag. The bright orange bag still serves me well as it has through many adventures in these intervening years and even got a new interest when a Vietnamese friend of mine saw the bag and exclaimed, "Hey, where did you get that rice sack?" as she read out the words which had been beautiful, but indecipherable, to me until then. So, it wasn't just a nice story... it was a real rice sack. Now project ahead to the markets and stalls lining the roads from Nairobi to Ngurunit.

Large white sacks, approximately three feet long by one and a half feet wide, lie on the ground filled with the original contents or lie filled with anything that requires a good, strong sack: charcoal, beans, spices, beads. They lie upright filled with their wares or are spread flat on the ground as a protector from the dirt. They cover manyattas against wind and rain. Most frequently, one sees them strapped against a bicycle or a back. They are plentiful and clearly useful and strong. Privately, I start to marvel at the way they are re-purposed. Only once along the road did I see them being sold outright and, after this sighting, kept a constant lookout for them. I started pestering Steven to stop and let me get some sacks. He responded to my requests with the patient voice one uses for small children or the slightly deranged.


Steven's responses aside, I remained as committed as ever to owning these versatile sacks. I started imagining how I would re-fashion these sacks into something that would interest American women. Each day that passed, my mind kept churning. Kind Claudia became my sounding board. Nicholas Kristof and images of empowering Samburu women danced in my head. Finally, on the penultimate day of our Kenyan adventure, Steven pulled over on the side of the road, without warning, and said, "OK, get out and get your sacks and don't pay more than 50 cents for them." Thrilled to be turned loose and for the first time, alone, into a market, I quickly found a willing interpreter. Despite the looks from the Maasai women that universally translated into "crazy mzungu," I came away with three sack specimens. I could have purchased 100.

Now the task in front of me was to turn these into something, which is where Bree Norlander enters this narrative. Bree was well known in The Little School community to be an expert seamstress. Growing up as the daughter of an upholsterer, Bree has a commercial-grade sewing machine and sewing room in her home. She cleverly had turned some packing material from my move west into a sack for my daughter earlier in the fall. I explained my idea and asked her to work her magic on these sugar sacks. She developed the pattern, sewed two prototypes of one style and invented yet a second style from the remnants. Her skill and vision has kept the vision going for the Samburu Sugar Sack project.

As Claudia and I use the two prototypes and test them for endurance, Bree works on translating the pattern into one that can be understood through pictures and symbols for any seamstress. Bree and I focus on the least number of seams to enable women with a knowledge of handcraft to be able to sew them. While I work on a low cost source for the bag straps, I feel pleased that this little project is moving forward. Ideally, with the sacks, materials, seamstress abilities, and a market outlet, we can turn this small idea into a meaningful source of income for the Samburu women. The need is more urgent than ever as the families in the Ngurunit area are suffering from drought with few resources to acquire food and water.

Laurel

Photo: "Laurel gets her bags," Maasai market (Claudia Daggett)

Prosperity with Dignity

After publishing last week's post, I was in touch again with Kathleen Colson. She forwarded the address for her blog -- which our readers may well enjoy!

Kathleen makes two or three extended trips to Northern Kenya each year on behalf of the BOMA Fund. She began writing about her current trip on October 27 and has been posting regularly since. Her descriptions of the living of the BOMA mission and its new tag line -- prosperity with dignity -- and of the work of the Rural Entrepreneur Access Project (REAP) are compelling. Her post "Swimming with the Crocodiles" struck a chord with me given my concerns, expressed in this blog, about the potential for unintended negative consequences when we act on charitable impulses. And I know my fellow travelers, in particular, will enjoy reading about familiar people and places.

Read on! BOMA Nomad, http://bomafund.wordpress.com/.

Claudia


"Heavy load," on the road from Ngurunit to Marsabit (Photo: Claudia Daggett)

For the Answers, Look to Those in Need

In our recent blog posts, Reflections on Cultural Survival and The Blue Sweater, we offered our concerns about the possible unintended negative impact of outside help to the people of Northern Kenya. Clearly, one response to these concerns is to look to those in need for the answers.

I had the opportunity in October to meet and talk with Kathleen Colson, Executive Director of the BOMA Fund, a non-profit organization serving Northern Kenya originally established in association with Joseph Lekuton. Over a bowl of soup in Brattleboro, Vermont, Kathleen listened to me lament over these issues that seemed to me to present a moral dilemma. When I finished, she simply said, “I don’t think it is for us to decide.”

From Colson’s perspective, the key issue is not cultural survival but human survival, which requires addressing profound poverty. The BOMA Fund and its Rural Entrepreneur Access Project approach this issue through working with the women in the rural Rendille, Samburu, Ariaal, Turkana and Elmolo communities in Northern Kenya to establish community businesses with a mission to improve the capacity of individuals to earn their own income. The BOMA Fund website and this video give an overview of their work:

Video source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTaEmgHL1l0

Christopher Werth captures this notion succinctly in the opening line of his recent Newsweek article, "A new fix for the needy" (10/25/10):

“Patronizing the poor is proving to be a deadbeat strategy. Trusting those in need may be the answer.”

Claudia