Blog Post #2 -- Defining Service

Blog Post #2 – Define Service.

To me, service means a few things and is at risk of being disingenuous, so it’s important to examine our intentions when serving. It seems that a lot of travel and tourist companies have been popping up giving people the chance to go off the beaten path to build a school or play with orphans or something temporary that allows people to get some good pictures for Instagram of them “doing good” while in reality they are satiating some desire for colonial repentance. Sometimes I’m not sure how what I am doing is different (I appreciate nice Instagram posts too), but I think investing in relationships and spending a sustained amount of time in Zambia this summer has shown me much more of this country beyond the “disaster porn” that writers sometimes talk about.

Since being in Zambia for a month now, I think service means knowing who, why, and how you are making the positive impact that you intend to make with someone. Not knowing how or why your impact will have the effect it has can be dangerous and allow people to take advantage of others’ good intentions, while not knowing the people you are working with on a more-than-stranger level becomes disingenuous. Additionally, I think a part of service is emphasis on with rather than for. Doing a random act of kindness for a stranger is of course a great thing to do, but big projects for communities that may or may not affect many people’s way of life is much bigger than that. It’s a message that says “I’m doing for you what you can’t do for yourself” which is not always the case.

I keep thinking about a professor who came to talk to my NS 2600 class who is the advisor for AguaClara. He talked about Cornell Students’ work in Honduras and Nicaragua and how they were meeting the needs in the community by not working directly with the community, but rather with construction managers and professionals in those communities who knew what their own community needed most. I’m not sure why this method isn’t always adopted when working abroad, why we’re so inclined to be paternalistic.

I feel better about my project on behalf of SAIPAR because our advisor, Professor Banda, is Zambian and knows what the legal system in Zambia is lacking currently. I don’t think Andrew and I will change any laws or end gender-based violence in the time that we are in Zambia, but I do think accumulating some research and compiling them in a clear and effective way will hopefully help other researchers when they go to change the law and do what we cannot. Similar to the Peace Corps volunteers we met with this weekend who told us about having to change what their idea of success was, I think service to me is being open to changing definitions of success based on community need and working with people rather than for them. Only then can a real positive impact be made and lasting relationships formed.