Conducting Service-Learning Projects for Undergraduate Students in a Global Context

Abstract

While there is a large body of management education literature focused on conducting service-learning projects for students in support of addressing today’s sustainable development challenges, the majority of articles in this area focus on the graduate student population. What’s more, there is a lack of emphasis on the importance of incorporating cultural context when designing and implementing service-learning projects on a global scale. Based on our experiences creating and carrying out a semester-long consulting class where US-based undergraduate students worked with Costa Rican rural entrepreneurs in support of building their sustainable livelihoods, we examine the benefits, challenges, and outcomes related to conducting service-learning projects for undergraduate students in a global context. We focus, in particular, on projects designed to address sustainable development challenges. In doing so, we identify critical success factors related to designing and implementing global service-learning projects for this student population. When these critical success factors are utilized, we argue that such global service-learning projects can be beneficial for undergraduate students and partners alike.