A Chameleon with a Complex: Searching for Transformation in International Service-Learning (Clinical Report‪)‬

The Nicaragua trip challenged my entire value and belief system. I now have feelings of guilt over having so much, of being privileged enough to be born in a stable prosperous country and into an educated White middle class family. Everyday I am unable to ignore a world of Maquiladoras, global commodity chains, and suffering due to the curse of bad luck, and social and political events that have taken place in Nicaragua and the rest of the developing world. Is this poverty the way it has to be? Do I just accept it and buy cheap goods at Wal-Mart or do I boycott and do something about the treatment of people in the third world factories that are being used and abused. My Nicaragua experience has gotten me involved in all of this whether I like it or not. The Nicaragua trip planted the seed ... (Karen, 1999, reflecting on her 1994 international service-learning experience in Nicaragua) As an educator who has facilitated an international service-learning program in Nicaragua for the past 10 years, I have witnessed firsthand the transformative impact that service-learning immersion programs in developing countries can have on U.S. undergraduate students' worldview and lifestyle. Comments in journals, final reflection papers, and alumni reunions include numerous examples that indicate some form of transformation has occurred, such as, "I am a changed person since Nicaragua," or "the experience in Nicaragua is something I think about daily." Students return with a radically different frame of reference or worldview. They describe their transformation as having a better understanding of the larger structural forces underlying social problems in