Service For Peace workshop A9 at the 20th IAVE World Volunteer Conference, Panama 2008
20th IAVE WVC Workshop
Names and organizations of other presenters: Harold Silva, Service For Peace Executive Director of Caribbean and Latin America and Campus Coordinator for Miami Dade College’s Center for Community Involvement Charles T. Phillips PhD is the president of Service For Peace (www.serviceforpeace.org) an innovative service learning organization that brings the global peace perspective into practice in communities in more than twenty countries. Charles is also a Professor at the University of Bridgeport (CT) teaching service learning courses on advocacy, leadership and nonprofit management. Harold Alexander Silva is the Service For Peace Executive Director for Latin America and Caribbean. He works with SFP National Coordinators in Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. Silva also works in one of the largest Hispanic educational institutions, Miami Dade College’s Center for Community Involvement, as a Campus Coordinator. Workshop abstract: To break with the long history of inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean, the World Bank concludes that, among other measures, societies need to undertake deep reforms of political, social and economic institutions, improve access by the poor to vital services and assets, especially education. Service For Peace seeks to address both sides of the gap by increasing awareness and action on both sides. Unless the political, social and economic institutions are sensitive to, and familiar with, the plight of the poor, there is little motivation to address their situation. If the poor are not exposed to possibilities beyond their current situation and provided with the education and the means to address their own needs, there is little incentive to strive for something more. Service For Peace therefore involves college and high school students in voluntary service programs designed to increase international cooperation and to break the cycle of poverty in Central America and the Caribbean. We form strategic alliances with colleges, government ministries, NGOs and businesses to improve elementary education and to provide experiential learning and training in leadership development, citizenship, and social responsibility. Service For Peace seeks to build a network of colleges and universities throughout the region, each with a service-learning program related to community development within the context of the Millennium Development Goals. Workshop title: Bridging the Gap Through Service: Addressing Inequality in Central America and the Caribbean This presentation examines a model for community economic development in Central America and the Caribbean that bridges the gap between the affluent and those living in extreme poverty. Signs on walls. Packet for each participant with 1 page introduction and a work sheet for shaping your own values, moving from ethnocentrism to multiculturalism, forming a social justice perspective on social issues. Workshop participants will be involved as small groups in an interactive process, and they can learn from each other as they go through the process together.
According to the World Bank, the richest tenth among Latin Americans earn 48% of total income, while the poorest tenth earn just 1.6%. The equivalent figures for rich countries are 29.1% and 2.5%.
- Introduce the concepts of social justice and advocacy as related to creating a civil and just society and as related to community based service programs. (5 min.)
What motivates people from your communities to become involved in social action? Invite audience response. (5 min.)
Examples of exercises that allow volunteers to analyze the personal values and preferences they hold to make the world a better place. Explain critical thinking skills that allow volunteers to discover the forces that create and reinforce social life as a basis for going beyond commonly held assumptions about social problems. (10 min.)
Introduce the concept of emotional labor as a useful concept for volunteers to process the different emotions they experience as they move from introduction to new environments, the initiation process, prolonged engagement process and the disengagement process. (10 min.) - Introduce Hoopes Intercultural Learning Process and reflection exercise that allows participants to contemplate their position in the eight stage process from ethnocentrism to multiculturalism. (20 min.)
- Introduce the Pathmakers™ curriculum and the relational leadership model for involving volunteers in the planning process and facilitation of small groups. (20 min.)
- Introduce Kaufman’s Sociological Imagination Exercise to explore issues. Participants brainstorm in groups. (10 min.)
- Reflections and actions steps on how to apply the learning in the workshop to current programs. (5 min.)
- Intended or targeted participants, and the expected audience number
Session is open to all people who want to make a difference-especially in bridging the gap between the social classes and those living in extreme poverty. Open for 25-100 participants.
- Practical applications, innovative components, or potential for establishing new projects/partnerships
- Innovative strategic partnerships with universities and under resourced communities
- Practical applications of service learning models that bring diverse participants together to work for change
- Objectives and expected outcomes and outputs
Participants will:
- Learn and apply effective learning exercises into program design and reflection exercises to allow volunteers shape their own values on social justice as a basis for social action in their communities.
- Examine the transformational leadership model.
- Learn exercises to gain new understandings about social relationships- Learn successful models to transform ethnocentrism to multiculturalism
- Determine what results to expect from service programs, in terms of changed lives, behavior, circumstances, health, competence, capacity, hopes, etc.
- Define the place you want to be and how you intend to get there.