A Community Partner's Role During a First-Year Service Learning Project

There are 3 primary roles in a service learning (SL) project: student, teacher, and community organization representative (COR). It has been established that students enjoy and benefit from SL experiences. 1-5 Teachers benefit as well, in their ability to meet educational objectives. 1 For the community organizations, the advantage appears to be obvious; their problem is resolved. However, the benefits for the COR must be more fully explored. This paper will examine the advantages as well as the inconveniences experienced by one of the authors while participating in a SL project. In the 2011 -2012 academic year, 45 first-year engineering students at the University of Prince Edward Island in Canada were introduced to a need from a remote village in Kenya. Though it would have been preferable to work directly with the villagers, poor internet quality and the extreme distance made this impossible. As a result, people from the local community, who regularly travelled to the village, identified the need and acted as the COR during the 15-week long project. In groups of 3, the students designed charcoal presses to convert agricultural waste into charcoal briquettes more efficiently than the current process. The COR was involved in the design process during the problem introduction, a hands-on demonstration of the process, question and answer sessions, reviews, and the design exposition. Also, while in the Kenyan village, the COR facilitated an exchange of information and performed an experiment designed by the students. The time demand, though great, gave the students a better understanding of the needs of the villagers. This paper will consider a qualitative assessment of the COR's involvements. This will be achieved through an examination of activities between the students and the COR, including a firsthand account of the events that took place in the remote village. Finally, the accomplishments and deficiencies that the COR experienced will be analyzed, and recommendations will be made to ensure that all participants' expectations are achievable.