Encountering others | Power, privilege and solidarity in international service learning

ENCOUNTERING OTHERS

Power, privilege, and solidarity in international service learning

Paul TreadwellNovember, 2016

POWER• We (first world, privileged) and I (white male, first world,

privileged) carry inherent power.

• It cannot be set aside – going “native” is a comforting myth.

• The question is – how do we employ this power?

ENCOUNTER

• Travel, whether cross town or international, is encounter.

• Each encounter is a call evoking a response.

• Each response is based in, and reveals, the travelers intent.

MISTAKEN INTENTIONS & FALSE GENEROSITIES• To hell with good intentions

– “I am here to entreat you to use your money, your status and your education to travel in Latin America. Come to look, come to climb our mountains, to enjoy our flowers. Come to study. But do not come to help.” Ivan Illich, 1968

• Service?– Service has a tendency to emphasize a “focalized” view of problems and

issues .

ENGAGING PRIVILEGE • “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting our time. But

if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”– Aboriginal activists group, Queensland, 1970s

DIALOGUE• 'Dialogue is the encounter

between men, mediated by the world, in order to name the world'. 

HOPE• “…dialogue cannot exist without

hope. Hope is rooted in men's incompletion, from which they move out in constant search-a search which can be carried out only in communion with others"

SOLIDARITYSolidarity deepens and transform service, creating a lens through which what has been seen and experienced creates a bridge. There is no other world, no place to go to – there is only the struggle of humans working together to build a world

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COMMUNITY

Building a community of truth which can bear witness and act in solidarity to sustain hope, support dialogue and transform the world.

ACCOMPANIMENT"As a society, we are happy to help and serve the poor, as long as we don't have to walk with them where they walk, that is, as long as we can minister to them from our safe enclosures. The poor can then remain passive objects of our actions, rather than friends, compañeros and compañeras with whom we interact.

IN GRATITUDEDon Teofilo – unknowing mentor for much of my work on this subject

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CONTACT• Paul Treadwell

• Tompkins Cortland Community College– Adjunct Instructor– [email protected]