Holding a Donated Chick in Front of the Completed Coops

Author: Katie Loethen | Major: Biological Engineering

I had understood since I was a freshman that I wanted to use the privilege of my scholarships and opportunities to study abroad to do community service in a host community. As a class of 2022 scholar, my study abroad interests were long delayed due to Covid-19 travel restrictions, but again thanks to the privilege of my scholarships and the support of my academic community, I was able to extend my graduation to allow me to study abroad. I was nervous to make the commitment, and I applied last minute to the faculty-led Service-Learning Through Community Partnership in Belize. I am grateful for the flexibility, encouragement, and enthusiasm of those who helped me get to Belize. Service, education, community, and immersion are the defining characteristics of my time in Belize. I believe that our service projects in Belize will improve access to food, education, and health for the children, young adults, and elderly who we worked with and for.

I chose the Service-Learning Through Community Partnership in Belize because it brings together my passions for service, food access, and environment. I did not expect to apply anything I was taught in my Biological Engineering courses to this project, but I had several opportunities to apply design thinking and use skills developed in my courses. The primary projects for my time in Belize were the construction of two chicken coops along with maintenance on garden beds and greenhouses at a school in Pomona Valley. I enjoy working outdoors and doing construction projects, but I was thrilled when I saw an opportunity to apply my hydraulics courses at the construction site. There was a water line running across the chicken coop site from the school to the neighboring home. The line served as the only water source for the family in that home, but we would have to disconnect it to build the chicken coops in the appropriate site. I was able to take the lead on reconstructing the line with PVC, adding valves for direct water control, and adding a spigot for easy access to water for garden beds and chickens. This experience is not a lecture-style education experience. You learn through critical thinking, flexibility, cultural immersion, and independent exploration.

There is a workshop experience that is facilitated by the partner organization Peacework which is close to a classroom-style discussion which tackles concepts like cultural identity, oppression, community development, and poverty. The workshop is a critical supplement to the experience in Belize because it creates space to process the challenging components of international development work with realism and optimism. The experience in Belize is not a tropical vacation—although fun excursions are one component—and the Peacework workshops provide a foundation for being an engaged global citizen.

There is an abundance of opportunity during this experience to make friends in the local community. One of the community partners is the Belize Family Life Association (BFLA) which is a group of young adults who work for comprehensive sexual health education amongst other projects. They are a great group of people to make friends with and they will teach you more about the life of teenagers and young adults in Dangriga. There is nothing like walking through an auditorium of teenagers and hearing English Creole in conversation—it sounds confident, humorous, and so similar to our English dialect that you feel like you are dreaming. Many of the people we met in Dangriga are in the ethnic group Garifuna which is a unique community in the African Diaspora. We work closely with many Garifuna people, including our good friend Pine who contracted to help us build the chicken coops. I was grateful to have conversations and learn about the lived experiences of Garifuna people as well as celebrate our experience with Garifuna drumming and dancing! The community is loving and welcoming, and I was able to become close with many of the local people by reflecting their welcoming gestures and asking questions about their lives.

The Service-Learning study abroad in Belize is a life-changing opportunity. I had the coolest and most impactful experiences of my life so far. The community of students, faculty, and partners has been developed over many years with intention and responsibility. The learning opportunities are like no other, and you will learn more about their community by serving them than studying them. One thing I hope students who follow me can understand before studying abroad in Belize is that the people of Belize are already solving the problems faced in their communities, so you will serve as a helping hand and partner in community-based initiatives. You will not be Belize’s hero, but you will affect the trajectory of their work through your willingness to apply your resources and skills in the community. My other advice is to convert the cash you bring to US$5 bills if you can—they accept US currency, but often they do not have enough change to manage US$20 bills, and their banks do not accept US$1 bills. Through this service-focused immersion in Belize, I learned more about other cultures and my own, and I was able to understand community-based development in a new context.