In his inaugural address, Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C., president of the University of Notre Dame, challenged us to become the bridge-builders the world needs. I suspect few people would argue with his call for Notre Dame to foster connections between people. But how can we answer that call?
Pope Francis suggests one way is to include those on the peripheries of life who can look at things differently yet are often invisible to the centers of power.
The University of Notre Dame, in its effort to be a bridge builder, offers endless opportunities for students to seek points of connection with others. Our Lady’s University is not the only institution creating such opportunities; “voluntourism” (a combination of the words volunteer and tourism) is an estimated $2 billion industry. Participants in these short-term mission trips intend to be of service while broadening their worldview.
There’s an opportunity for many of these initiatives to be more inclusive of the people on the other side of the bridge. By prioritizing community impact, students are more deeply affected by such service opportunities. They learn how important, yet difficult, systems change really is when they share in the challenges alongside community members.
Without a focus on community impact, we risk perpetuating the belief that students from places of privilege and power can “save the world” and fail to recognize how much we can learn from the powerless and the voiceless. We are all in need of saving, after all. By bringing a “white savior” mentality into community work, we only further oppress communities and create dependencies.
Paulo Freire, Brazilian educator and advocate of critical pedagogy, inspires my own teaching philosophy. Freire in his “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” describes experiential learning in this way: “Teachers teach but are also learners; learners learn but also teach. Ideally, service-learning is a process of empowerment for students, faculty and community members as together they are co-learners and co-teachers in creating better communities.”
Experiential learning with a community impact orientation focuses instead on community empowerment, local capacity building and other activities that acknowledge and attempt to reduce dependencies while enabling local communities to advance their own aspirations. This community orientation does not imply that the goals of student transformation come second; rather, it implies that meaningful student transformation requires such an orientation and approach. This is because it demands participants engage their moral imagination.
Moral imagination challenges us to have the audacity to see the world for its possibilities while also humbling us to grasp the reality of its challenges. A true immersion, rooted in community impact, requires this level of honesty and perspective. When we immerse ourselves in both the realities and the dreams on the other side of the bridge, only then can we affect positive change. My longtime Frontlines in America partner, Father Greg Boyle, who founded Homeboy Industries, the world’s largest gang rehabilitation and re-entry program, says this beautifully: “If you stand at the margins, that’s the only way they’ll get erased. We go to the margins so that those on the margins will make us different.”
Creating immersions for student learning requires intentionality to facilitate both community and student impact. Community-based global learning, a term developed by academics who are also practitioners, is defined by a set of seven practical components:
Community-driven learning and/ or service.
Development of cultural humility.
Global citizenship.
Continuous and diverse forms of critically reflective practice.
Ongoing attention to power, privilege, and positionality.
Deliberate and demonstrable learning.
Safe, transparent and well-managed programs.
As an instructor for the experiential service learning courses Frontlines in America and Business on the Frontlines, I include these components in my courses along with components of Fair Trade Learning, which explicitly engages the global civil society role of educational exchange in fostering a more just, equitable and sustainable world.
First, I fundamentally believe that community and student impact go hand-in-hand. Prioritizing or privileging students over communities would actually diminish the impact on both. The way to ensure an equal focus is to properly engage in co-creation.
Co-creation includes community voice and feedback at every step of the process through transparent research and collaboration.
Through co-creation, we build solutions from the ground up in accompaniment with the community. We intentionally ensure that community representation is not tokenism but a true inclusion with a long-term commitment.
Through co-creation, we build solutions from the ground up in accompaniment with the community. We intentionally ensure that community representation is not tokenism but a true inclusion with a long-term commitment.
Frontlines projects are not intended to be a one-time engagement. Rather, most collaborations are three or more years in nature to allow time to build trust, learn together and troubleshoot implementation. This gives us the best chance for long-term impact.
For students to properly engage in co-creation and prepare themselves for such an immersion, they are required to engage in a formal process of reflection and connection with those who they aspire to serve. Students submit a series of individual reflection papers throughout the course and reflect collectively as a team before, during and after their immersions.
Through both a result of these practices and as a practice itself, Frontlines engages in community building. Over the 17-year history of our program, we have built a network of nearly 700 student alumni, more than 40 partner organizations and dozens of other professionals who come together to exchange ideas and become resources for each other. This happens as our students return home and continue their work as bridge builders and as our partner communities support others engaging in similar efforts to overcome poverty, violence and oppression.
Two examples of Frontlines alumni taking this fair trade learning approach forward in their own lives are Briton Moffitt (MBA ‘18) and Austin Graber (MBA ‘22).
Moffitt fell in love with Mendoza’s mission of business being a force for good. As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he found it particularly meaningful to work alongside LDS Charities with his Business on the Frontlines team serving the Mayan Q’eqchi’ people in the Polochic region of Guatemala. Following graduation, he worked in manufacturing management until an opportunity with his undergraduate alma mater, Brigham Young University, came his way.
In early 2024, Moffitt became the business development director for BYU-Pathway Worldwide, which is the university’s global online program. He’s responsible for partnering with employers and developing entrepreneurship and career pathways in the 180 countries where students reside. The idea is to prepare students for good jobs, widen economic participation and improve livelihoods in communities they call home.
“To really change lives, all have to be invested and committed, but without jobs, everything is for naught,” Moffitt said.
Inspired by his experiences with Business on the Frontlines and as the former student body president of Iowa State University, Graber, a Deloitte consultant, pitched an experiential service learning initiative to leaders at his undergraduate alma mater. His idea has grown into a business course focused on applied consulting for underserved entrepreneurs. Recognizing the importance of local engagement and partnership, Graber connected with Risala Mureth, a Tanzanian driven by her own experiences of overcoming gender-based challenges in the STEM field, to work with him on this initiative. Murteth runs a startup working with women entrepreneurs. In January, the inaugural cohort of 18 students will travel to Tanzania to co-create solutions alongside the business owners.
Graber, Moffitt and countless other Notre Dame alumni understand author Bryan Stevenson’s belief that “It’s only in proximity that we get close enough to problems to understand how to solve them and understand their complexity.” Stevenson, public interest lawyer and author of “Just Mercy,” highlighted this in his Rev. Bernie Clark, C.S.C., Lecture on Notre Dame’s campus this fall.
As bridge builders, it is imperative that we not only understand the bridges the world needs but that we invite those at the other end to be part of co-constructing them with us. Only then will they be sustainable and inclusive. To learn more about Community-Based Global Learning and Fair Trade Learning, visit The Community-Based Global Learning (CBGL) Collaborative, a network of educational institutions and community organizations. I encourage you to also consider taking the Collaborative’s pledge to uphold the principles of Fair Trade Learning as part of your community engagement work.