Recently 50 grade school students at Queen of Angels Elementary School in Chicago made their 3,000th peanut butter and jelly sandwich to help feed homeless men and women at their local food pantry. The school introduced students to this and other service projects over the past four years to help them grow as Catholics in their understanding of the importance of participating in service to others in the community. The impact has not only been that Queen of Angels won NCEA’s Home and School Award in 2009, but that 50 students have had the experience of seeing how one small act of charity can make a big impact in the community in the fight against poverty 3,000 sandwiches later.
At a global level, international service-learning programs at Catholic universities across the United States are challenging students to learn about the multi-dimensionality of poverty in the developing world, analyze its root causes, and identify strategies for social development to gain a broader understanding of the systemic forces at work. So while community service can begin with the making of one peanut butter and jelly sandwich, service-learning challenges students and their teachers to look beyond the needs of the individual and address the underlying social issues in the community.
Moving from Charity to Justice
As Catholic institutions of learning, whether K-12 or Higher Ed, we are called to move from performing works of charity to performing works of justice for the communities we serve - - working not just for our neighbor but with them - - to address their areas of greatest need, neglect, and nurturing. We are called to participate not only in events of service but events and experiences that touch, teach, and transform the community, its teachers, and students. This is the type of impact that service-learning can have in supporting our Catholic mission and identity. It can help us fulfill the call to love our neighbor, be our brother’s keeper, and respond to the Preferential Option for the Poor.
So how exactly do service-learning and community service differ? While community service engages students and teachers to help those in need, it typically does not include an academic component or academic credit, nor is student learning the primary focus. By comparison, service-learning integrates academic study with the community and becomes an impetus for learning about larger social issues. Also, service-learning projects are usually created in collaboration with the community, involve reflection on what is being learned, and attempt to further the cause of justice in the community rather than just provide a charitable intervention. According to Marisol Morales, Associate Director of the Steans Center at DePaul University, “As institutions of higher education, our call is to provide knowledge and create critical thinkers through a Liberal Arts education. Service-learning gives us a way to put this into action by doing more than lip service - - giving students a more critical perspective on why societal problems exist in the first place and moving them from a sense of charity to justice.”
Fulfilling our Catholic Mission
Leveraging service-learning as a teaching tool can help us fulfill our mission as Catholic institutions by bringing justice into the classroom. According to Patrick Green, Director of Experiential Education at Loyola University, “Students are used to doing community service. What they long for is a deeper, meaningful connection - - not just to understand the issues in the community - - but to be more deeply connected to the community. Our students want to better understand poverty, hunger or homelessness, and the underlying systemic structures that cause these problems. Service-learning challenges them to think about how they can affect these underlying structures to create a more just society.” “We have a unique voice,” adds Rachel Tomas Morgan, Assistant Director of International Engagement & Justice Education at the Center for Social Concerns at the University of Notre Dame, “because as Catholic institutions we see service-learning more holistically in terms of our obligation to our neighbor and God.” Thus, service-learning can also help students answer the question of what it means to be Catholic.
Fulfilling the Tenants of Catholic Social Teaching
Doing service that has an orientation toward justice is not only key to service-learning but core to Catholic Social Teaching itself. Whether addressing the Life and Dignity of the Human Person or the call to Solidarity, the tenants of Catholic Social Teaching remind us of the core values that underlie our organization’s mission and values which are rooted in the example of service, stewardship, and social change that Jesus gave us. In the words of Pope John Paul II, “A Catholic university must prioritize issues which are not always emphasized by other lay institutions, especially those related to the… promotion of justice for all, personal and family quality of life, protection of the environment, the search for peace and political stability, a more equitable distribution of the world’s resources, and a new economic and political order which will better serve the human community at the national and international level.”
While this makes perfect sense on paper, how does this link between Catholic Social Teaching and the fulfillment of a university’s mission play out in real life? According to Patrick Green, “Service-learning allows us to breathe life into the mission and demonstrate our commitment to the community in both action and reflection.” Rachel Tomas Morgan adds, “There is a moral obligation that we as Catholic institutions have that may or may not be the same for non-faith-based institutions. While the call to global citizenship is becoming more and more prevalent in Higher Ed, we need to ask ourselves, ‘Are we doing anything differently as Catholics?’” If we intentionally respond to our Catholic educational missions in a way that is informed by Catholic Social Teaching, we can create a unique, intentional brand of Catholic service-learning for students and teachers, which will benefit our communities locally and globally.
The Impact of Service-Learning
Whether the locale is India, Uganda, Cambodia or Mexico, international service-learning can challenge students to work with children with special needs, confront disparities in educational systems, address deficits in nutrition and healthcare, or examine the cultural and social roots of HIV. Through it all, the common theme is that learning is working in service to justice.
When executed effectively, service-learning programs can affect the transformation of a student’s worldview, a stronger belief in a just world, and identification that the struggle of the poor is their own struggle. Through reflection, students learn to see that human development is not a one-way process but a process that engages all participants in a greater understanding of each others humanity.
Ultimately, as Catholics, service-learning can help students connect their inner life of prayer with their outer life of social engagement, gaining new insights into the suffering of the world and the suffering of Christ. Thus, what might have begun in Chicago as a call to love thy neighbor by making peanut and butter and jelly sandwiches for homeless men and women, can lead to an international service-learning experience in Cambodia that transforms a college junior’s perspective about the world and how they are called to serve it after graduation. In this way, service-learning can help Catholic institutions fulfill their mission and identity, help Catholic students live more fulfilling lives and create a more just society.
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