Youth For Change

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

The 2008 National Service-Learning Conference in Minneapolis shows how service-learning can build academic skills and citizenship among young adults, as well as communicating the need for involvement within local and global communities.

By Kevin Woo One + | October 2009

“THE WORLD IS PASSING THROUGH TROUBLOUS TIMES,” an Amiens priest once said. “The young people of today think of nothing but themselves.”

While the observation might be interpreted as a pessimistic view of today’s world, it was actually made by Peter the Hermit in 1274.

Too frequently, during the course of history, youth have been described as uninterested and uninvolved. It would be easy for teens and 20-somethings to throw up their It would be easy for teens and 20-somethings to throw up their hands and blame the world’s problems on earlier generations.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the South African cleric and 1984 Nobel Peace Prize winner, however, offered a dramatically different point of view as he addressed an audience of 2,600 at the 2008 National Service-Learning Conference (NSLC) in April 2008 at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Archbishop Tutu told the audience that through the years it’s been young people who often change the course of world events.

“Have you noticed how at very crucial moments in history God has used young people to be his collaborator, partner and fellow worker?” Archbishop Tutu asked the audience during his keynote address. He then recounted the Bible story of Jacob’s youngest son, Joseph, who was chosen to stave off the devastating effects of widespread hunger. “When the Egyptians were suffering from famine and starvation, God sent Joseph, the last born of the family, to [help others] escape the riggers of famine and starvation,” he said.

NSLC links youth, educators and communities to promote service-learning in schools. Service-learning is a type of experiential education that integrates traditional classroom education with actions that benefit the recipient as well as the participant. “Service learning is different than volunteerism,” said Amy Meuers, NSLC conference director. “With service-learning you’re not only doing something for someone else, you’re learning something that is tied to a curriculum. Volunteerism only involves going into a community and putting in hours on a project.”

The conference’s plenary sessions and exhibits were dedicated to teaching how service-learning can simultaneously build academic skills and citizenship among young adults, as well as communicating the need for involvement within local and global communities. Through service-learning projects, the students applied knowledge learned in the classroom with real-world projects. The students used their background in English, math, geography, chemistry and physics while working on such projects as writing letters to Iraqi school children, fundraising, packaging food for needy families and conducting community projects.

Several programs were conducted at the convention center to attract the attention of all attendees. One example was a program called “Letters for Peace,” which saw attendees write letters to children in Iraq expressing support and encouragement. The letters were translated into Arabic and mailed by the national Letters for Peace organization to children in Iraq. Because the “Letters for Peace” activity was conducted on site, it served as a model of in-class service-learning projects for those who don’t have the flexibility to leave the classroom for empirical experiences. “Anything that is more experiential will be more engaging for the young people,” Meuers said. “But the ‘Letters for Peace’ project is a great example of something you can do on site. You’re doing something that will better the world, but you don’t have to go anywhere.”

Another onsite program was “Art for Change in South Africa,” involving two Philadelphia-based nonprofit organizations: Foundations Charter School and the Multicultural Youth Exchange. It enabled attendees to decorate donated T-shirts with messages of peace, hope and youth for a change. Once decorated, the shirts were sent to South African schools.

Most of the NSLC activities allowed students and faculty partners to get out into the local community to serve those who are underprivileged. Three projects—“Feed My Starving Children,” “Empty Bowls” and “Second Harvest Heartland”—helped feed the hungry.

“Feed My Starving Children” was a program designed to benefit children in Haiti. Sixty conference delegates measured and combined three dry powders that, when mixed with water, turn into a fully nutritious meal. The individual meal packets were boxed and sent to Minneapolis churches for distribution to Haitian communities.

“Empty Bowls” and “Second Harvest Heartland” were initiatives designed to fight the hunger crisis in Minneapolis. For “Empty Bowls,” conference attendees made, glazed and sold ceramic bowls. The proceeds were donated to local food banks, soup kitchens and other organizations that help fight hunger. “Second Harvest Heartland” was a project that saw students pack food boxes for low-income seniors and mothers with children under age 6.

While much of the industrialized world is moving toward energy conservation and the long-term effects of global warming, much of the African continent remains dark at night. The “Light Up Your Life” project saw the students make solar-powered flashlights from recycled material. The flashlights were distributed to villages in Tanzania, enabling local residents to more easily as they travel at night.

Tony Cervone, a Minneapolis-based science teacher, created kits containing raw materials, and the attendees learned to transform the materials into working flashlights. The students learned about the different villages in Tanzania where the flashlights would be sent and how the devices would benefit local communities. The “Light Up Your Life” project was tied to geography and science education.

Several inner city projects were also undertaken to boost the restoration of neighborhoods and public areas around Minneapolis. The Blake School environmental science class, the Outdoor Environmental Club and members of the NSLC delegation spent a day at Spring Lake cleaning the park area of invasive plants and overgrown vegetation, which had overtaken the area after the spring runoff. The issues of invasive species, water quality/testing and pollution were integrated into school subjects such as chemistry and biology.

Forty-five conference attendees went into an inner city neighborhood to remove graffiti that had been tagged on homes and businesses. Known as the “Anti-Graffiti Squad,” the participants utilized their knowledge of math and chemistry to clean up areas that had been hard hit by taggers. By going out into the community, the students were able to discover the long-term challenges associated with living in the inner city.

“Young people are our idealists. You dream dreams,” Archbishop Tutu said. “You as young people go out as PeaceCorps volunteers, often leaving affluent homes, to go and work in poverty stricken parts of the world. Dream with me for a new kind of world.” One+

KEVIN WOO has written extensively about the global meeting and event industry.