What is Service Learning?

Service learning moves beyond just doing service. When we are engaged in service learning we learn to look beyond the immediate needs that we see and look at the structures and systems that have created those needs. Our faith challenges us to do both: direct service and advocate for social change. Doing direct service includes helping out at a meal program or visiting a nursing home. Doing advocacy means speaking for those who are victims of injustice and making changes in the system. So, while serving in a meal program, we are challenged to uncover why people are hungry in the first place and to try to fix the problem.

The following excerpt from YouthWorks (a youth ministry resource by the Center for Ministry Development) explains service learning in detail…

"A frequent temptation in service and justice programming with youth is to jump right from an experience of justice, especially one which touches young people personally, to action. Young people want, and need, to do something. While this approach may be of some help in responding charitably to pressing needs, it is less helpful as a response to structural injustice.

Structural injustice is not beyond the understanding of young people. In fact, it is a very real experience for many. Prejudice, discrimination, poverty and need know no age limits. The challenge to those who work with youth is not to help them understand an abstraction called injustice, but rather to help them believe that they can do something about the very real social problems that touch their lives.

What leads young people, or any people for that matter, to action for justice? Several elements suggest themselves. First, they need to be connected -- they need to be personally impacted by the issue, or at least feel how it affects others. Second, they need to understand the issue well enough to believe that their response will make a difference. Third, they need a sense of direction and hope, a sense that as large as a problem may be, it can be whittled down to size when people of faith work on it together.

The process of analysis and action used in these justice education sessions involves young people in action for social change. It also involves them in analysis and reflection, a process aimed not just at immediate action, but at helping them understand the world in which they live and what they can do to make it a better place for all.

The approach to the Pastoral Circle has been adapted from the work of Peter Henriot and Joseph Holland in the hope of making their process more easily understandable and usable in youth ministry settings.

Step One: Involvement

The first step in the process -- and the basis for any action -- is Involvement. Through Involvement we connect with social issues and make them our own. Exploration, Reflection and Action flow naturally from the lived experience of individuals and communities. Because we live not just independently, but as members of families, neighborhoods, school and work groups, towns and nations, Involvement moves us beyond personal experience to reflect on the experience of the wider community. Because we are members of a church community, we experience and explore social issues from the perspective of Catholic social teaching. We try to feel and understand how social issues touch the lives of the poor. Getting in touch with what people are feeling, what they are undergoing, and how they are responding to the situations they find themselves in -- these are some of the experiences that constitute Involvement.

The entry point for analyzing and acting on an issue may be:

Involvement, in some cases, may begin naturally with the experience of the group. The justice issues dealt with in this book may be part of the lived experience of the young people with whom you work. If so, the Involvement activities provide the young people in your group with the opportunity to express their feelings and thoughts about their experience. Involvement gives them the opportunity to ask how this same injustice is experienced by others.

Involvement, in many cases, however, will not spring from personal experience. In this case, the Involvement activities provide an opportunity to creatively connect young people with the issue to be explored. Good Involvement activities simulate the experience of injustice, helping youth "feel" the issue being analyzed, or expose them to what is happening in the local community, helping them to "hear" and "think" from a broader perspective.

Once they are connected with an issue, young people are ready to move to Exploration, to ask the" why" questions from an Involved perspective.

Step Two: Exploration

The Involvement of individuals and communities in situations of injustice must be understood in the richness of all their relationships. Exploration is a means of widening our reflection on our experience to search out the relationships between values, events, structures, systems, ideologies. Exploration helps make sense of our Involvements by putting them into a broader picture and drawing connections between them. It goes beyond our immediate experience to probe the historical roots and future implications of events and issues and systems. The task of Exploration, the second step in the Pastoral Circle, is to examine causes, probe consequences, and delineate linkages rooted in the structural realities which condition our experience and limit or expand our freedom of choice.

For the Christian, Exploration will become a habit of thought which comes to expand our approach to all of our experiences. Exploration helps us become persons who habitually ask WHY in the face of human suffering and injustice. We will always look for causes, relationships, structural realities in order to understand the plan for effective action for change.

The scope of Exploration, the resources needed, and the length of the process will vary from issue to issue. If Involvement (the entry point) is an event with which youth are very familiar, not much data gathering from external sources will be needed. We will not require a resource person to assist with Exploration. However, if we are trying to understand a complex social issue, or the way a whole system functions, we may need a longer time period and some external resource persons to assist. The Exploration activities included in this volume offer a variety of approaches, some fairly simple and others more complex. Use the activities that best fit your needs and resources.

Step Three: Reflection

The third step is Reflection upon the issue that people are involved in and that they have explored, in light of the Scriptures, Church social teachings, the resources of our Tradition, and the lived faith of the Church community.

Faith is not just an intellectual process, but a lifestyle as well. This step involves people in exploring what faith says about particular social issues. It involves them likewise in exploring what the faith community is doing about social issues and what motivates its response. Reflection should call forth not just an intellectual assent to faith, but a commitment to incorporate it within one's life. The witness of committed individuals can go a long way toward making Reflection real. The Word of God brought to bear upon the situation challenges old ways of thinking and responding by raising new questions, suggesting new insights, and opening people up to new action possibilities.

Step Four: Action

Since the purpose of Exploration and Reflection is decision and action, the fourth step, Action, is crucial. Complex social issues seldom lend themselves to simple solutions. Social problems can seem overwhelming. But their very complexity makes it possible to approach action for change from many different angles. If Reflection helps people to feel part of a wider faith community committed to justice, then the Action step helps them to identify the particular role they can play in weakening and eventually destroying injustice. Action, whether individual or group, is always seen within a community context. It can be locally or globally focused, short term or long term. It can be expressed in a variety of ways. But if it is grounded in Involvement, Exploration and Reflection it will be effective. At the same time that it brings about small changes in social problems, Action can produce major changes in the lives of those involved.

A response of action to a particular injustice brings about new Involvements which call, in turn, for further Exploration, Reflection, and Action -- each time building on and extending previous insights and experience. The Pastoral Circle process is more like a "spiral" than a "circle" -- leading individuals and communities deeper into action for justice."