Fall 2009 » Videos » Arkansas 180: Belize Experience Changes Students' Lives

Arkansas 180: Belize Experience Changes Students' Lives

April, 2009

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Belize experience changes students' lives

Listen to one student discuss her experience working for the Belize Community Development Program, a large-scale service-learning and community-development project focused on Dangriga and the surrounding Stann Creek District. Dozens of students and faculty members in disciplines as diverse as economics, biology, English, social work, engineering and agriculture have traveled to the small country to enhance the educational experience and to help improve the community. The experience has changed students' lives in profound and lasting ways. For more information about the program, visit http://studyabroad.uark.edu/1409.htm or read "Believe in Belize," a feature story in the Fall 2008 issue of Arkansas, the magazine of the Arkansas Alumni Association.

Amy Farmer: The Belize Community Development Program is a student-centered global service project. The mission of the program is to engage in sustainable community economic and social development and allow students to have the opportunity to use their academic expertise in practice.

Rachel Duncan: It was my sophomore year. I was in an economics class and Amy Farmer came to talk about this new program that the U of A was starting. She said that it was a study abroad experience but it was unlike any other that we've had before because students were not going to be really taking classes there. They were going to be teaching and learning more about a culture and really applying their classroom knowledge in a real world setting.

Amy Farmer: The Belize Community Development Program works and practices in Dangriga, which is a small town of about 10,000 inhabitants in Belize. We send somewhere between 40 and 60 students for a month every summer to engage in various service projects across disciplines. Those projects include agriculture, social work, literacy, ecology, engineering, business and education.

Rachel Duncan: The kids that I was teaching were wonderful. They were full of life and energetic but that was also extremely testing for me. They were hard to control sometimes but I honestly believe that the best way to learn about a culture is through the children. They're so transparent and they have no inhibitions. They ask you anything, tell you anything. It was a learning experience like I'd never anticipated.

Amy Farmer: In year two, we were looking for someone to become our liaison to the community. Both Peace Work and the University of Arkansas needed someone who would be in the community representing our project and Rachel just stood out as an excellent candidate.

Rachel Duncan: Amy Farmer and I were in a meeting one day and she said "Oh by the way, we need someone to go and be our community liaison next spring." And I said, "Oh Amy, don't tell me that. I want to go."

Amy Farmer: She was still in school. She had classes to take. She ended up taking a leave for a semester and using this project as an internship.

Rachel Duncan: One of the primary goals of this project with the community liaison is to have someone on the ground most of the year so that we are there year round and we are a presence in the community and we're not just someone who's coming in and trying to fix things. Because these people see church groups and different volunteer organizations come and go every year. I believe that the only way to make this program work is to really establish trust. People are not going to be open to your ideas unless they really trust you. So my goal is to get on a personal level with them -- to show them who I really am and what are goals really were so they would buy in and we could work together.

Amy Farmer: It's amazing to see these students' enthusiasm for what they're trying to accomplish and truly wanting to make a difference in the world. They leave this program changed.

Rachel Duncan: Those people taught me so much about myself. It's made me a much stronger individual and it's shown me what I really want out of life -- and that is to continue to give back to others. I would not have had the opportunity to discover that without this program.