Good Works in Central America: Interrogating North American Voluntary Service

Abstract

Streaming video requires Flash Player, RealPlayer, or Windows Media Player to view.Short-term delegations to Central America for the purpose of providing material aid, assisting with grassroots development, or offering direct service have proliferated in the last four decades. This conference critically examines travel-for-service and the micro-politics of encounters between privileged visitors (professionals, politically motivated groups, service-learning programs) and impoverished third-world communities they visit, as well as the larger implications of poverty relief efforts organized outside of and sometimes in opposition to existing national and international institutions. Such projects promise solutions to seemingly entrenched problems in poorer nations through virtuous vigorous action. Yet in actuality, the dynamics of cosmopolitan interaction are complex. This conference will provide an opportunity for students and faculty interested or already engaged in international service to reflect upon their motives, practices, and experiences and to consider not only their immediate accomplishments but the longer-term implications of the kind of citizen-diplomacy they aspire to enact. The keynote speaker, Nicaragua's Father Fernando Cardenal, has committed his life to direct service to the poor within the framework of a religious vocation and training, more specifically, liberation theology. In 1980, he directed Nicaragua's National Literacy Crusade, an internationally acclaimed voluntary effort to teach reading and writing to rural and underserved populations, organized through the revolutionary state as a nationalist project. The academic speakers come from a variety of positions within the university but share a concern for reflection and the identification of "best practices." They have all either volunteered with or facilitated volunteer missions/delegations.Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security StudiesOhio State University. Center for Latin American StudiesOhio State University. Center for Folklore StudiesOhio State University. Department of Comparative StudiesOhio State University. Department of Spanish and PortugueseOhio State University. Literacy StudiesOhio State University. Service-Learning InitiativeInternational Poverty Solutions CollaborativeEvent Web page, streaming video, event photo

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