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uofainghana · 7 years ago

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This is a rehearsal of a dance that was included in both of our final productions.

Community Service Learning Project Reflection

In the Summer of 2017 I had the opportunity to travel to Ghana as part of a program offered by the University of Alberta’s music department. The program promised to offer insights on development in Western Africa as well as first-hand experience working on a Community Service Learning project with an NGO in northern Ghana. The Community Service Learning program consisted of creating two performances, one in a rural setting and the other in an urban setting. This paper is meant to highlight my experiences in addition to the various strategies that were used by myself and my peers to navigate the project. The paper begins with a short overview that compares Community Service Learning and explores how it differs from Global Service Learning. Following this, I outline some of the principles that guided the project. Then, I provide a short introduction to the CSL project and elaborate on different defining components of the project before finally discussing ways in which it could be improved for future iterations.

Community Service Learning and Global Service Learning

Community Service Learning (CSL) is a form of education that is centered on the experimental aspects of fieldwork that students learn from via various partnerships with different community organizations. These organizations are often on the front lines of different causes which are pivotal to the livelihood and vitality of a community, causes are often driven by grassroots sentiments that snowball into larger causes of action and are then addressed by different community-lead organizations, at times these sentiments even grow into their own community organizations. CSL connects students with organizations striving to meet community needs and students are able to learn and practice methods of direct action that lead to the betterment of a community. When unencumbered, a CSL project should strive to empower a community by contributing to the community’s ability to remain independent of larger, often corporate, trends in society. It is because of community independence that a CSL project should be motivated by the needs of a community, otherwise it faces the risk of being an irrelevant exercise of student labour and demonstrates the disconnect between a post-secondary institution and the community which it serves. The importance of community input cannot be understated because a relationship between community and volunteers is a fundamental aspect of a CSL placement or project, in fact, the relationship between student volunteer and community members should predicate a CSL project. A CSL project should be based on the input of the community and should minimally be a collaborative effort between the two parties.

It is because of the heavily collaborative effort required to create successful projects that Global Service Learning (GSL) projects are often criticized. A major challenge faced by GSL projects is maintaining grassroots sentiments especially when the project is meant to be executed transnationally. GSL projects can easily become prescriptive in nature when they are exported because programs which are internationally oriented are more likely to miscommunicate simply due to the increased distance between partners involved in the project. The introduction of an increased distance between the two service learning parties easily opens itself to miscommunications between the parties. This relation is further aggravated by the power inequalities between the two service learning groups. For example, projects pursued by the service learning volunteers may prove to enforce hegemonic interpretations of reality, Michael Apple elaborates on this issue and argues that “the kinds of cultural resources and symbols schools select and organize are dialectically related to the kinds of normative and conceptual consciousness ‘required’ by a stratified society” (2). Clear communication is therefore indispensable to any GSL project, as it is to a CSL project, however, GSL projects face additional challenges when attempting to articulate project goals, these challenges can come in the forms of cultural contingencies, participant biases, language barriers, or power divisions. How successfully these unique issues are navigated is one of the key determinants of not only how collaborative a GSL project is, but also whether that project has any sustained meaning and impact on a community.

Project Overview

The project that I was involved in was a collaborative effort between the University of Alberta’s Music Department and Tamale’s Youth Home Cultural Group. Tamale is the largest city in northern Ghana and a majority of it’s over 220 000 inhabitants are Muslim. The placement I participated in was biphasic, the first part of the project involved a production in the city of Tamale and the second part consisted of a similar project in a rural Ghanaian district called Tolon. The project was meant to incorporate traditional forms of Ghanaian culture, namely singing and dancing, in a relevant way to address growing problems or areas of disconnect experienced by our participants. The group of service learners consisted of four post-secondary students, which includes myself. The two groups we worked with were school-aged kids, the kids in the city of Tamale were all between the ages of 15-17 and the second group in the rural area consisted of kids between the ages of 17-20, these two groups were our community partners for this project. They also served as cultural informants on many occasions, which is something that greatly aided our ability to communicate interculturally. Our service learning group was tasked with collaboratively co-creating a culturally relevant performance that would address issues that were directly affecting the lives of our community partners. Interestingly, the final production from both groups were quite similar.

Theoretical Guidelines

Our group of North American students had decided on a few rules we would try to follow through the project. These guiding principles were generally very simplistic, we did not foresee a great deal of difficulty in trying to enforce these rules. These rules were derived mainly from guiding principles of CSL projects and were supplemented with direction from ethnographic studies. Some of these principles were:

Our work would strive to be as undisruptive as it could be.

If disruption became necessary and was unavoidable then the disruption would have to be as minimally disruptive as possible.

To avoid neo-colonial complications in our project, we would prioritize the voices of our community partners over our own.

The project would be sustainable and easily recreated if we removed ourselves from the equation.

The community partners would experience a tangible benefit from participating in the project.

We would attempt to maintain contact with partners following the completion of the project.

We recognized that following these rules may be limiting in some aspects, but it would help us minimize the negative impacts we would have on our community partners. The need to navigate our own impacts and maintaining a self-aware and self-critical critical perspective is explained by Margaret Himley in her description of CSL’s evolution from the disciplines of sociology and anthropology, she argues that

[s]ervice has roots in the volunteerism of white middle- and upper-class women in this country, where these hopeful and idealistic (and perhaps naive) volunteers went out into poor and working-class neighborhoods to improve the material and moral lot of the less fortunate they found living there. These volunteers had the social capital to move close to these strangers in order to re-script their lives within dominant discourses and values. Moving close did not produce a linear transition from distance to proximity, however, but rather a more complex encounter involving, [that was] at one and the same time, social and spatial relations of distance and proximity. Through service projects, these women also achieved a measure of public status and power by representing their work to public audiences and themselves as "good citizens" taking care of those who were weaker and more vulnerable and (believed to be) more dangerous.

(419)

We attempted to implement a process that would result in respectful, collaborative, interactive and non-exploitative interactions. We had hoped that the relationship resulting from our closeness with the kids would allow us a richer glimpse at the issues that were defining the lives of members in the community. Feminist scholars, such as Diane Wolf, have repeatedly argued that in-field risk management alone is myopic as a method of mitigating the power relations involved in working with a less privileged group. According to this perspective, researchers and volunteers can only temporarily manage their privilege and stop doing so once they leave the field or project. A researcher's positionality and locationality cannot effectively be isolated in a

project or research simply by employing friendly or emphatic methodologies (Wolf 35). Wolf elaborates on this and says, “while the contradiction posed by positionality is not resolvable, these dilemmas must continue to be confronted by service learners in the field without naivete, with open eyes, and without discourses that conceal” (36). To this end, we emphasized both the replicability of the projects and our long-term relationships with the various groups of students to mitigate some of the problems arising from the interpretive power we commanded as outsiders in this scenario.

The Field

As previously mentioned, the project was biphasic and each phase culminated with a public performance followed by a small debriefing with the community partners. I will use this section to describe the different aspects of each of the projects as well as the similarities which existed between the two. Both of the projects delivered a similarly formatted final product, a stage drama preceded by a cultural performance that included call-and-response singing as well as dancing.

Our collaborative partners from Tamale were a group of students from a local junior high school, this group’s ages ranged from 15-17 years of age. There was a total of ten students, seven of them were girls and three of them were boys. With this group we had eight total meetings spread out over one month. These meetings generally consisted of brainstorming different ideas for performances as well as refining and practicing the different existing ideas.

In contrast, the Tolon group consisted of slightly older, high school aged kids. The ages in this groups ranged from 17-20. The gender divide in this group was quite different from the Tamale group’s, here we had a group of 13 with only four being girls. Our meetings with the group were spread over one week and took place every evening for around one to two hours.

Group Formation

When it came to group selection we had no real input in the process that was used to select students. This is something that we confirmed with both our organizing parties, the University of Alberta and Tamale Youth Home. The process varied for each of the two groups of students. The students from Tamale were all from the same school and were in the same class, these students were selected by their teacher with no indication on whether or not there were any selection criteria for the choices. This is something we learned by directly asking the students during one of our later rehearsals. These students had little to no idea about what they had been selected for or what would be expected of them in their roles. During our later sessions, more of their classmates became interested in the project and began to watch our rehearsals. It seemed that more students became interested in the project as it progressed. This will be a great benefit in future iterations of the program as participants may have some familiarity with the expectations as well as the outcomes of the program.

Group selection with Tolon group was even more arbitrary. We had originally assumed that we would be working with a school’s dedicated cultural dance troupe. However, as it turned out, we ended up working with a group of kids who were formerly associated with their school’s dance troupe but had since graduated. The kids were selected due to their previous acquaintance with a dance instructor from Tamale Youth Home. This was meant to minimize possible issues we may have with the group such as English language skills as well as to ensure that the kids we would be collaborating with would have some familiarity with traditional music and dances. In terms of the Tolon group, it is harder to hypothesize how our project will affect future interest into the collaborations since the selection process for this group can change dramatically for the next iteration. For example, there may be interest in the project but we do not know if these same kids will be selected to perform again or whether the school’s cultural troupe would be selected.

Theme Selection

An area of the project which was extremely crucial was the selection of topics

that would be addressed by the final production. Selecting the topics that we would address through our project was something that had the potential to determine the type of relationship we would have with our community partners as well as the degree to which the entire project could be considered collaborative. In order to synthesize a strong and collaborative thread in our performance we ensured that the two groups that we worked with had a great deal of agency during the entire creative process. We aimed to listen to what everyone involved in the project had to say without over-emphasizing any specific voice. To simplify this goal, we split up into smaller groups of three to four people, including one service learner, to discuss issues that were relevant to our lives and brainstorm ways in which the topics could be represented in a bigger production. The conversations usually began with one of the service-learners describing issues we had encountered ourselves, then we would ask others to share what problems they thought were important. These problems were a little different between each of the areas, though larger themes remained constant in each area. Themes that came up in both areas were the importance of education and the negative impacts of early marriage. Themes that were exclusive to the urban environment were HIV, inter-religious tolerance, drug use, and female circumcision. Themes exclusive to the rural environment were hand washing, mosquitoes being harboured by stagnated water, improper use of medicated malaria nets as farming tools, and prostitution. All of these themes were generated through brainstorming sessions. At times, theme selection was carried out more organically. Many of the sub-themes and conflicts that drove the performance came from improvisations the students did while they were rehearsing. Interestingly, the final themes incorporated into our performances were incredibly similar—it seemed as though there was not a severely pronounced urban-rural divide in the lives of both of our community partner groups.

Finally, it should be noted that group formation was not rigidly enforced. In our first project, based in Tamale, after a few initial sessions, groups dissolved and students moved around to fill vacant roles. This worked especially well as it gave the students the opportunity to share their own ideas in smaller groups but then move on and help peers who had ideas that required more assistance. Originally, each group was tasked with exploring a possible contribution to the final production. We had two songs and two skits for our final production and after this had been finalized we were able to ensure everybody had a relevant role for the performance. This flexibility proved to be extremely rewarding and was demonstrated by the case of a student who had paired with a friend in the initial group selection but had ended up without a significant role in a song but was eventually able to join both of the skits, becoming a central figure in each of them and lending a great deal of comedic relief to the entire production.

Project characteristics

A surprising element of each of the projects was how similar the two productions were. Having a similar format was expected and the format we chose was meant to be the most engaging for audiences. Thus, each of the shows began with a performance that featured service-learners singing, dancing, or playing the accompanying music. The surprising similarity between the two projects was the overlap in the skits. Each of projects featured a skit with a female protagonist and highlighted how education impacted the lives and choices of not only educated individuals but also their communities.

The first skit in the Tamale show was about a young girl living with her father and stepmother who is then married to an older man when the family encounters financial difficulties. The girl faces abuse as a young incompetent wife and eventually dies in childbirth. The second skit in the Tamale project was of an english professor who argues against his tribe’s tradition of circumcision and refuses to consent to his daughter receiving the procedure. This production also featured a song that borrowed its rhythm and a majority of its lyrics from a local pop-song that was constantly playing on the radio, the song was repurposed to address the ills of drugs and alcohol. A second song was featured in the project and was offered by one of the students. This song highlighted the dangers of HIV/AIDS and offers a three-step approach to avoid contracting the virus.

The skit in Tolon was about two female classmates. One girl had a supportive family who helped her with school related expenses and the other girl had to date a boy to get help with similar expenses as her family was not supportive of her getting

an education. The play ends with the girl with the supportive family becoming a health-care provider for her community and the other girl dying due to childbirth complications. This theme was selected because it offered a parallel to the lives of the students in Tolon, many of whom were no longer in school because their families did not value education and instead made them help at the farm or would use available funds to build additional structures on their housing compounds rather than sending their children to school.

Overall, I felt that the project was a success because it gave the students a medium through which they could speak to authority in a way that was socially acceptable. The students’ ability to use this production to ‘speak-up’ to adults in a way that would be taken seriously was facilitated by the input and flexibility they were afforded in the early stages of the project.

General Issues

With all of its success, the project, unfortunately, was not without its faults. One of the biggest shortcomings of the project was its inability to engage all students that participated in it. One student, in particular, was fairly shy during all of our rehearsals in Tamale and eventually stopped coming to rehearsals. It’s fairly reasonable to expect that not all students would be interested in the project, however, this is an issue that could have been dealt with in advance if students had a general idea of what would be expected of them in their roles as community partners for this project. Furthermore, parents were not informed by the school of the new activity their kids were undertaking. Albeit, many of the students mentioned it to their parents, there was no information about it from the school. For future iterations of the program it might be helpful to provide parents with a short description of the projects as well as contact information for representatives from both collaborating community institutions. The lack of communication was quite obvious in the final two days of the project when both very few parents and guardians attended the final production and also when I was required to write a few letters to parents requesting their permission for their children to join us longer than usual on the day of the performance.

Another issue that cropped up was specific to the Tamale group. In one of our

early meetings, we learned that the students had missed an entire period in school so that they would be able to join us. This was against our principle of minimal disruption and we immediately changed our meeting times to better accommodate the students. During our later sessions we also learned that the students were in the middle of final exams, in fact, we learned that the students had an exam the very next day. As soon as we learnt this we made arrangements for the students to leave early. The long-term implication of this would be exploring if it would be possible to schedule the program so there would not be a significant overlap between the kids’ final exams and the program.

Other issues we had to be sensitive to was the kids’ comfort with one another. During one of our rehearsals in a scene where one of the actors was meant to hit another actor, the exchange was meant to be exaggerated and fake but we noticed that one of the actors was actually striking the other one. After noticing this we had to handle the ensuing conversation tactfully as to not appear too harsh while also resolving the issue. We decided to alleviate the situation by adding a prop into the scene and emphasizing that the actor should not actually be striking their colleague with it at all but instead be making a motion of hitting them instead. A different skit required that one of the boys who was playing a doctor declare one of his female patients dead. We noticed that the scene where he took the dead girl's pulse was fairly awkward and learned that neither student was too comfortable with the scene. During our discussion of the scene we learned that the students thought that the pulse could only be found over the heart. Both students were relieved to learn that a pulse can be located through the wrist and happily incorporated this change into their performance.

The biggest issue that arose from this project was the lack of immediate long-term benefits available to community partners. The skills that the participants learned are definitely a form of cultural capital, an example of this would be the traditional dances that all participants learned through workshops. A more commodifiable benefit that could be made available to participants is a participation certificate. At the very least, a certificate of this sort would demonstrate a participant’s command of the English language. The final issue I will mention will be easy to address in future iterations of the program. When we began the project we had little to no idea in regards to who would

be attending our eventual performance. If we had a better idea about the demographic of the eventual audience for our play we would have been able to finetune the message to be more relevant to the lives of the audience. The audience for our production in Tamale was largely school aged children and young adults, had this been something we knew in advance we could have produced skits that were more relevant to the lives of these groups of people. However, it should be noted that the audience for the shows can easily be changed simply by sending invitations. In our production in Tamale, only one parent came to see the final performance. If the parents were more involved in the entire process I imagine more of them would have attended the performance.

Project Impacts

The project had a few different impacts on the lives of all those who participated in it. In terms of long term impacts of the project, there is some potential that the project challenged some of the views held by audience members. The project in Tolon was actually extremely subversive because it gave young people, who would otherwise be dismissed by their elders, a platform through which they were able to voice their concerns to elders. Furthermore, this production was actually attended by the village chief, other important elders, and even the parents of many of the kids who were performing. What made this dynamic subversive was the normalcy with which adults tend to scold and chastise anyone younger than them in Ghana. Both groups of community partners gained the necessary skills to create and organize another similar project if they chose to do so. The project is simple and does not require a financial investment to recreated. The Tolon group benefitted from an investment that the service learners decided to make in order to start their own cultural troupe. The Tolon group were formerly part of a school’s dance troupe and since many of them were no longer able to attend school, they were no longer able to use the school’s equipment. We made a small investment in the group so that they may be able to purchase their own equipment, such as drums or costumes, for future performances. A final benefit from this project is offered by its ability to introduce participating groups to cultural traditions that they might not encounter otherwise. In

this sense, the project has a potential to be a strong medium that can be used to preserve culture.

Concluding remarks.

Overall, the CSL project offered a learning opportunity to both service learners and community partners. I think both parties step away with a richer understanding of the diversity of human cultures and human expression. I found that this CSL project helped foster inter-cultural communication between service learners and participants in a way that, for me, translated across the entire trip. The project itself was simple enough to not overshadow the entire trip but also presented many opportunities to add depth and complexity to it as we became more adept with the entire process. Looking forward, there is talk between service-learners to start a scholarship for community-partners of the program to help pay for costs associated with schooling. This project served as a conduit through which many other issues can be addressed and the project format easily lends itself to any community members who wish to address topics which are dear to them.

Works Cited Apple, Michael. Knowledge, Power, and Education : the Selected Works of Michael W. Apple. New York, NY: Routledge, 2013. Himley, Margaret. “Facing (Up to) 'the Stranger' in Community Service Learning.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 55, no. 3, 2004, pp. 416–438., www.jstor.org/stable/4140694. Wolf, Diane L. Feminist Dilemmas in Fieldwork. Westview, 1996.

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