Weaving partnerships: Liberatory collaborations in community-based learning

By Mac Benavides

In this blog post, I discuss how educators and program administrators can reimagine community-engaged global programs as tools for liberation. Drawing from research conducted as part of my doctoral dissertation on Community-Based Global Learning (CBGL) programs, I use excerpts from a collective testimonio to honor community voices in reimagining CBGL scholarship and practice.

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The metaphor of weaving comes from the work I have done with partners in Guatemala over the last five years. Within the Guatemalan context, historic and current ties to Maya heritage are central to how community organizations approach social change. Weaving is a central aspect of Maya cultures, reflecting the arts, history, worldview, and dedication of Maya peoples. The intertwining of threads is more than simply textile production – rather, it can be regarded as the birth of something new. It is complexity and art. I use this metaphor of weaving to unravel and weave together the threads of global partnerships.

Around the world, community organizers are grappling with an interconnected web of complex challenges that create and sustain injustice. Yet, theories of change rooted in neoliberal commitments isolate change efforts and instead promote conditions of resource scarcity and inter-organizational competition. Co-constructing the world we need – a world that moves beyond social hierarchies entrenched in patterns of domination and subordination – will require creativity, collaboration, and commitments to liberatory action.

Higher education institutions have the potential to contribute to all three.

The history of contemporary higher education is rooted in colonial processes and has more recently been overtaken by neoliberal logics. As a result, colleges and universities are among the most recognized sites where new knowledge is produced and future generations are prepared for the emerging needs of a changing world. However, higher education fails to deliver liberatory contributions when our approaches to knowledge production, community engagement, and student learning are firmly embedded within colonial past, present, and future.  

In recent years, many higher education institutions have put forth statements outlining commitments to diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice. These community guidelines, though often beautifully displayed across campus as well as online, largely amount to little tangible change to how institutions operate. Even within programs seemingly committed to local and global justice, such as service learning and community-based learning programs, there is often a disconnect between our intent and impact.

I see an opportunity to disrupt our institutions’ commitments to western ways of knowing, being, and doing by reimagining how we do engaged learning and global partnerships.

How is volunteerism, and how should it be? Well, for me, volunteers are another thread. We are all threads in this tapestry of humanity, united through a shared history – coming together through lessons both good and bad. They are parts that are stained or tattered. They are tangles and knots. But there are also magnificent and beautiful designs.

At my institution, one of the core principles that we hold within our community-based learning programs is a recognition that knowledge does not flow unidirectionally from the supposed experts to the community members and students. Instead, we believe that learning emerges from an understanding of interdependence and an appreciation for the wisdom of local knowledge. As we have begun to see humanity as a living tapestry comprised of intertwining and inseparable threads, we have implicated ourselves in both the knots and the beauty of the fabric. The element of living serves as a reminder that humanity’s tapestry is not static. We can alter the direction of the weaving, shifting the shape and design – embedding within the folds a pathway toward liberation.

Unraveling the Tangled Threads

There exist many dreams of what CBGL is and could be. Then, there is the reality of what it is and has been. How can educators and program administrators bridge the gap between these two visions?

Certainly, we teach important lessons about power, privilege, and structural violence. Yet, what change do these lessons have in terms of how students navigate power systems while abroad? Have we and our students disrupted internalized superiority we may unknowingly act on in our collaborations with community partners? As we reflect on and respond to these questions, there is another crucial consideration we have to ask: according to whom?

After so many challenging experiences with volunteers, sometimes we feel that we cannot stand to continue these collaborations. Some meombers of my team tell me that it would be better if volunteers didn’t come anymore because it costs us so much to receive them without any real benefits for our organization and community. Volunteers want to come and see the fruit of their work during the little time they are here. That’s why you participate in projects that simply mask the bigger issues. You come and paint the walls of a house and make it look pretty on the outside. But inside, there is no electricity or running water or even a place to sit.

Critiques of global programs often point to issues like voluntourism, lack of contextual understanding, and difficulties navigating power imbalances. We work so hard to prepare students cognitively and emotionally for interacting within a new context, but they may still struggle to escape the consumer lens that is ingrained in US society. Given that many programs minimally include community partners in pre-trip components, we may not offer sufficient support to foster excitement for and commitment to the work of our colleagues on the ground.

Some volunteers came to work in our school with students. They played with the kids, but they did not want to actually do the work of teaching. One day they asked us to do a field trip to the lake so they could do a lesson on the history and geology of the region. What a great idea. We went with a group of local teachers to support this field trip. Upon arriving, the volunteers sat away from the group to rest and sun bathe. They didn’t even speak to the children throughout the entire excursion. They put on their tourist hat and completely forgot that we were depending on them.

In addition to the ways students engage with communities, another major critique of the field involves the exclusion of community voice in program design, implementation, and evaluation. We know little about any impact we have – positive or negative – on our community partners. There are many reasons why we lack data. Evaluation is expensive, it takes time, and it’s unpredictable. We are programmatically safer and personally more comfortable if we focus our attention on the positive student experiences and the words of gratitude we receive from our community partners.

Despite the fact that we do not have the resources to do so, it is instilled in us how important it is that you leave here proud and with the feeling that you have accomplished great things to change our lives. Thank you so much. And, for what? But, it is unavoidable because it is also part of our culture. If we are not grateful, we feel rude and disrespectful. Not only toward you, but more so toward our ancestors who taught us the value of gratitude.

Our comfort can easily come at the expense of our community partners.

Weaving the Threads

The stories I share in this blog explore the complex nature of global partnerships. Though it can be disorienting and disheartening to hear stories where our programs have negatively affected our community partners, we cannot shy away from the tangled mess that collaborations have created in the past and present. Similarly, we must understand how and why our programs have supported partners’ efforts and what aspirations look like for reciprocal partnerships moving forward.

The tapestry becomes a beautiful work of art when the threads come together from the heart. Although some threads are not there throughout the entire tapestry, they leave behind a special design that contributes to the overall beauty. Together, we weave the future.

The concept of mutual learning and knowledge sharing has been a key element of reimagining our programs as a tool for liberation. In our school, we have made more intentional efforts to connect with partners to determine how student placements will provide benefit for everyone, and we’ve shifted our pre-departure learning from a focus on intercultural competence toward intercultural humility.

Strengthening the authenticity of our relationships with community partners has also allowed us to better understand what challenges had previously been invisible to us. We learned that the expectations we had regarding what learning looked like was the product of our colonial lens. Engaging the whole of our humanity allowed us to be better partners, because doing so opened us to understanding and appreciating local knowledge more fully.

We have this interconnection with other living beings, with the earth, with everything. Through this interconnection, we become aware of our humanity – we discover that in addition to our minds, we have our hearts. Then, this commitment becomes more authentic – more nourished – when it is rooted in the human heart. By coming here in this way, without holding back, you will enter into a new type of humanity.

In theory, CBGL is situated to contribute significantly to the civic mission of higher education and promote meaningful social transformation worldwide. In practice, however, we have seen that there continues to be a disconnect between established best practices and the experiences of host communities. By unraveling the tangled threads and weaving them anew, we have been able to critically assess the impact of our partnerships with our partners.

Partnerships as Tapestries

While in the field connecting with community members, one response that kept coming up was “no one has ever asked me to share about my experiences before.” Despite decades of work advancing the field of CBGL and other global programs, the voices of community partners continue to be silenced in the development of theory and practice. Leaders in the organization who were initially skeptical of what they might share with me later scheduled third and fourth meetings as more stories kept coming to mind. As the entangled threads came loose and these stories were finally given space, we were then able to weave a dream of something better.

The tapestry representing our relationships with community partners has become even more radiant and continues to unfold as we commit and recommit to the work of reciprocity and liberation.

To close out this blog, I offer the following considerations to encourage reflection on the impact of your programs and how you might reimagine your partnerships through the metaphor of weaving. Once you have engaged in relational work to (re)affirm your commitment, these questions can be a powerful conversation tool that allows you to weave the threads together with partners.

  • Paternalism and charity mindsets frequently manifest in unintended and subconscious ways stemming from a place of internalized superiority. How are our pre-departure programs preparing students to recognize and appreciate community members as change agents? How do their interactions in-country reflect the learning we expect from these lessons?

  • Global programs have long been critiqued for perpetuating voluntourism and consumer mentalities. What mechanisms do we have in place to gauge students’ understanding of program expectations and willingness to contribute to community efforts?

  • As a field, we generally aspire to develop intercultural humility to help students learn to respond appropriately in moments of culture shock. In what ways are we also preparing them to navigate and appreciate different ways of knowing, acknowledge the contextual nature of problem-solving, and develop creative ways to overcome language gaps?

  • Especially within Indigenous contexts, there are added nuances that need to be addressed to avoid perpetuating colonial harm. What have we personally done to learn about the past and present experiences of our community partners with colonialism and imperialism? How do we support our students to understand that their social identities hold different meaning in different contexts? How does our program move critical reflection deeper than the surface to recognize how our cultural values and those of our community partners might interact?

  • Reciprocal partnerships involve mutual effort and benefit. How do we help community partners prepare for their role as hosts and supporters of student learning? What have we done to celebrate local knowledge systems so our students and community partners can recognize the possibilities of mutual learning? How have we co-constructed our definition of reciprocity and or vision of the partnership with our community partners?

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Macario (Mac) Benavides is an assistant professor in the Staley School of Leadership at Kansas State University and teaches in the Qualitative Research Graduate Certificate in the College of Education. As a first-generation college student and a bilingual student of color, Mac views education as a vehicle for liberatory change. His approach to collaborative and reciprocal engaged partnerships is deeply personal and reflects a commitment to building bridges between academic traditions and local knowledge systems. Much of Mac's engaged work is done in collaboration with community organizations in rural Guatemala where efforts are made to infuse Maya worldviews with sustainable development practice to address local challenges. As a community-engaged scholar, Mac’s teaching, research, and practice center around global and domestic community-based learning; reciprocal partnerships in community-driven sustainable development; leadership education; and creating inclusive and equitable learning environments at institutions of higher education.

Institutional Context: Kansas State University (K-State) is a public research land-grant university in the state of Kansas in the United States of America. The first operational land-grant institution in the nation, K-State has an entangled heritage – we are both a product of dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their lands and a tool for creating greater access to education. Over the last few years, the university has devised a campaign to re-imagine what it means to be a land-grant institution by expanding our commitment to community engagement across the state and around the world.

Snapshot Institutional Profile (for comparative purposes as part of the broader project described below):

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This entry is part of a Public Writing Project, Higher Education for the World We Need, co-edited by Eric Hartman, Shorna Allred, Jackline Oluoch-Aridi, Marisol Morales, and Ariana Huberman. Initial reflections in that writing project will be posted here, on the blog of the Community-based Global Learning Collaborative (The Collaborative). The Collaborative is a multi-institutional community of practice, network, and movement hosted in the Haverford College Center for Peace and Global Citizenship. The Collaborative advances ethical, critical, aspirationally decolonial community-based learning and research for more just, inclusive, sustainable communities.

Join us for the next Collaborative Summit, Collaboration for a Better World: Global Learning, Hope, and Justice, from November 8-10, 2024, at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, MA.

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