Essential Participants: Centering the Experiences of Southern Hosts in Global Service-Learning Pedagogy and Practice

Abstract

In this paper we are concerned with the ways in which hosts are often excluded from scholarship and programming of global service learning. By global service learning (GSL), we mean a multiplicity of programs that occur facilitating service work for people across borders, generally with volunteers moving from the North to the South. We present findings from a research project conducted in 2014 with 37 host families. We circulated a survey to better understand host experiences of, expectations of, and hopes for GSL. Drawing on these survey results we provide some prompting questions for GSL participants (both students and program designers) to shift focus from student experience to relationship and mutuality. Using global service learning literature, critical disability theory and critical pedagogy through an intersectional lens, we center questions of uneven labor, accessibility, and structures of inequity. Three main themes emerged from our data: mutuality, gendered labor, and preparation. We present several infographic images capturing themes from the study to facilitate discussions with students who are preparing for GSL experiences and for those who are leading and designing programming. Our intention is to provide tools for educators to center the voices, desires, and motivations of Southern hosts in all of their GSL preparations.