Fabian Lifka

EXPL 292
Professor Patrick M. Green
04/25/2016
Final Reflection
This semester was a very eventful semester to me, especially because of my EXPL
class. We learned about different community service models, multiple youth development
organizations from the Chicago area but also in Peru and of course, we had an eye-opening
trip to Peru. In the following text, I will reflect on course readings, discuss different concepts
of community service and will relate these to my Peru experience. At the end, Im going to
connect my learning experience to Loyolas mission statement
The most important part of the whole course was the term service. Throughout the
semester we learned different definitions of service. According to Adam Davis essay What
We Dont Talk About When We Dont Talk About Service, service isnt always good. Different
outcomes are possible after providing service, for instance, only one of the two parties had a
positive experience or even both parties end up with a negative experience. In his essay, Davis
addresses that service is much more as we think by explaining problems of service in a great
way. His essay is not only critical it also shows that service is needed but has to be improved.
Davis let people think about service in a different way, he made me think about service more
questioning but he still gave me the appeal to do service. But in a more productive and
respectful manner. Ivan Illich provides an opposing view on service. In his speech To Hell
with Good Intentions, he criticizes students from the U.S who went to Mexico to provide
community service. I believe that Illichs point of view is not right since he generalizes any
form of community service outside the U.S as counterproductive. Another view on service has
Keith Morton in Starfish Hurling and Community Service. He states that Talk, listen, build
relationships, know your self, your environment is needed to improve community service

which is an important point to my mind. But he is also saying that we should privilege
humans over animals which I disagree with because service means also to help animals.
After having learned different standpoints on service, we can now bring service in a
bigger context which is community development. In our course we talked about the Asset
Based Community Development (ABCD) model which explains how a community can work
by using gifts and assets. The basis of the ABCD model are individuals who live in the
community and provide skills or gifts to the community. Associations are the next step in this
model because in Associations, a group of people come together as volunteers to work with
common interests. Whereas Associations are people who are volunteering, Institutions are
groups of people who get paid and mostly operate more organized. An instance for a work of
Institutions are building schools or other buildings, so they are very important to the
community. Apart from Associations and Institutions, land, space, and buildings can be used
as assets as well. To make all of these steps work, a community needs connections to find out
about the gifts of each individual. As we can see, every individual is a key to a successful
community since everyone got different gifts and skills, and can help building relationships to
others to improve the work in the community.
In the ABCD model the community is a local community, maybe from a town or a
small city but we also have a world community where we can also use our gifts to help the
community. The essay Gate A-4 by Naomi Shihab Nye deals with this topic. Nye describes a
situation at the airport where there was an announcement which said that if anyone speaks
Arabic, the person should come to Gate A-4. It was Nyes own gate, so she went there to help
a woman who was concerned that she missed her flight. After she explained the woman in
Arabic that the flight was just delayed and helped her to communicate with her family, the
woman was providing cookies to all women at the gate and no one declined. This story shows
that you can provide your gifts, in this case, speaking Arabic or providing cookies

everywhere. The people at the airport didnt know each other before but they helped each
other with their skills to make their waiting time an enjoyable time.
Having learned all these things, our course went to Peru to provide our skills to the
community. I was really concerned about my own skills since Im not speaking Spanish and
thought that this language barrier could be hard for me. The first interaction in Peru was with
the children from El Agustino, a poor neighborhood in Lima. I realized quickly that these
children didnt care who we were they were just interested in having a good time. They
started directly to play soccer which made it easy for us to connect with them since soccer
doesnt need a language. I believe that our course as well as the children had a positive
outcome of service since they made our job easy by showing us different types of warm-up
games and we helped them to organize the games by being referees or coaches. Relating that
to Adam Davis essay, we see that this type of service had positive outcomes for both parties
which is not always the case. This situation also shows that students from the U.S have an
impact or can provide positive energy to people from South America, so our trip stands for a
counterargument to Ivan Illichs statement. I believe that because we learned about the history
of Peru and especially about the background of El Agustino, we could interact better with the
children since we knew what to expect before we went there. According to that we were able
to build relationships, we knew ourselves and most importantly we knew the environment we
worked in. All these points stand for productive community service according to Keith
Morton. I already mentioned an example of the ABCD model with Nyes story about Gate A4 but I think our course could also provide gifts to the community. Im thinking of the day
where our course got divided into groups of four to be coaches for the children from El
Agustino. At this activity, we could provide our soccer skills to the children and could also
use our experience of different practice activities. These gifts helped the children to improve
their soccer skills and to enjoy their time with us.

Having talked about the different communities in Gate A-4, we could explore in Peru
what global citizenship means. I thought that we are global citizens since we traveled to Peru
and provided community service but that is not the only way to be a global citizen. I realized
that the people involved in the local organizations in Peru are global citizens too. The Martin
Luther King organization in El Agustino provides different programs for children but also for
adults for their education through school classes, sport activities and music. This is the perfect
example for community service and made me think of my definition of global citizenship
because they are providing community service in their own neighborhood and dont travel to
another country to do so. This organization shares the same goals and values as our course
and is concerned about the inequalities in Lima, Peru, and the world. Therefore, to be a global
citizenship you dont need to travel around the world, a global citizen thinks globally but can
also act locally such as Madeline Greene states in her essay on global citizenship. This is why
the Chicago sports-based youth development organizations were in our class as guest
speakers. They operate in the same way as the Martin Luther King organization in Peru just
that they are located in Chicago and deal with local problems here. It was eye opening for me
that these organizations were in our class because it illustrates that inequality and poverty is
not only a problem in developing countries, it is a problem all over the world, also in Chicago
where we live. Furthermore, it makes it easier for us to be involved in community service and
to have an impact on our community. Taking a look at social justice and The Two Feet of Love
in Action model we can see that our trip was mostly charitable work because it meets basic
needs and aid individuals. We volunteered on playing soccer with children and we were
coaching them new skills. In addition to that, most of us donated cleats or t-shirts to them. But
I also think that we had at least a small impact on social justice since we supported the
organizations which try to remove root causes and work on new methods to improve
structures.

If we take The Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm, we see that experience, reflection, and
action all work together. The evaluation of these actions as well as the transformation of those
into another context reflect the learning experience at the end. Our experience with
community service before our trip to Peru was less educated than after. The reflection of the
trip in our course after the trip helped us to understand what it meant to us and to the Peruvian
people that we went there. The experiences in Peru made us feel more involved with
community service. By saying that, I already evaluated our learning experience but now it is
important to transfer our knowledge into a new context, which is community service in our
local community.
My whole learning experience throughout the year is also related with Loyola
University Chicagos mission statement:
We are Chicagos Jesuit Catholic university a diverse community seeking God in all things
and working to expand knowledge in the service of humanity through learning, justice, and
faith.
I realized that Loyolas mission are more than just words, we lived the mission in our course.
We had a diverse course with Americans and Internationals, travelled to Peru, where we
experienced a different culture and where we worked in a poor community. These experiences
as well as all of our course work, developed myself as a person. Now, I have a different
mindset towards happiness and things that are important in life. Before the trip, I thought that
happiness in life is having a well-paid job, a nice house, and having a family. Of course these
are things which improve your lifestyle and still things I pursue to achieve but the trip opened
my eyes that happiness is living in a community which cares about each other, for instance a
community described by the ABCD model. I became aware of how privileged my life is and
that I have the opportunity to be involved in community service, also locally, since I got the
learning experience. As a result, our learning experience showed us what the mission means

and illustrated the values Loyola University Chicago shares. We are part of Loyola and part of
the mission. We can do greater things in life if we keep the mission in mind.