Teaching "Real Utopias" through Experiential Learning

In this article, we describe a way to encourage students to envision real utopias through the Global Village experience at the Heifer Ranch in Arkansas. The Global Village experience introduces participants to issues associated with global hunger, poverty, environmental sustainability, and resource consumption and provides opportunities to experience simulated poverty and resource inequality. Using student journals recorded during the experience and participant observation, we demonstrate how students' learning is enhanced by temporarily living outside their typical comfort zones and closer to the global averages of consumption. We find that the Global Village experience is an effective and unique tool for engaging students in global and transnational issues and for encouraging students to imagine other possible worlds.