From Service to Solidarity: Evaluation and Recommendations for International Service Learning

For service learning pedagogy to live up to its full potential, educators must address the pitfalls of privilege that often go unexamined in relationships between groups of affluent university students and the underprivileged populations that service learning programs traditionally seek to “serve.” In order to address the dynamics of power and privilege inherent between those who “give service” and those who are “served,” a relationship of honesty, reciprocity, and mutuality must be established and promoted between those two groups. This study is an effort to further establish such a relationship by fully involving Salvadoran partners in the evaluation of a service learning program in El Salvador. The evaluation was conducted in order to learn more from the program’s international partners and to include their voices in the further development of the program. As a result of interview responses from Salvadoran stakeholders, this paper seeks to further investigate the distinction between the ideas of service and solidarity and the ways in which solidarity can contribute to larger social change.