Community Service as Lifestyle

By Jessica Stark

This summer, a dozen Rice University students left the country and their comfort  zones to em­­bark on a service trip to San Lucas Tolimán, Guatemala, to work on projects requested and directed by indigenous people. Arranged through the International Service Project program developed by Rice’s Community Involvement Center, this is the seventh trip to the site.

“It is not about ‘us’ coming to help ‘them,’” said senior Jane Sundermann, one of the program’s student co-coordinators. “It is about ‘all of us’ working together to achieve mutual goals. Our job there is to work where we are needed or as the community leaders see fit. I am so excited to work side by side with the members of the community and talk to them about their lives.”

In the past, groups have worked on developing a centrally located women’s center. Rice students also have helped build a medical clinic, a dental clinic, a school and a children’s park and have contributed to a reforestation project. Each project was built from the ground up, including moving boulders to clear land and participating in building construction.

“Rice has been intimately involved in the community, and that is what makes this trip so unique: the long-standing relationship with the people of San Lucas Tolimán,” said Christa Leimbach, assistant director of the Community Involvement Center. “The opportunity to stay for two weeks in the same place really enables the students to learn about the culture and, in turn, learn about themselves.”

Leimbach, who accompanied the students, facilitated pretrip education and trip logistics, but she gives most of the credit to the student volunteers. “It’s a student-led trip and a student experience,” she said. “These are incredible students who are helping others on their own time, in the midst of their busy academic lives. I’m grateful for the opportunity to go with them, watch them grow and see what they are capable of.”

Under the leadership of student co-coordinators Sundermann and Karina Radulescu, the students spent the spring semester learning about Guatemala and raising funds for the trip by baking cookies, washing cars, organizing a dodgeball tournament and writing countless letters requesting support from friends, family and the Rice community. For many of the students, none of it felt like work.

“I’ve learned that service really can be a way to live one’s life; a way to approach every day. And I like that lifestyle,” said Sundermann, a psychology major from St. Louis. She has been involved with a number of service projects ranging from English as a Second Language tutoring to orphanage outreach in the Dominican Republic to constructing classrooms in Mexico.

“Service has been one of the most important educational experiences I have had in my time at Rice,” Sundermann said. “It’s one thing to learn in the classroom, but to go out into the community and apply my knowledge and skills is an incredibly rewarding and educational experience.”

To learn more about the Community Involvement Center, visit www.ruf.rice.edu/~service.