Global Sustainable Efforts
Supporting local communities and projects while we travel is a core component in most of our faculty-led and service-learning programs.
This not only creates a strong connection with the people and places we visit but also inspires students to do good while they travel, as well as when they return home!
Below are a few projects that we support around the world that have already created inspiration and social impact for everyone involved:
Guatemala
Los Niños de Guatemala
Los Niños de Guatemala provides underprivileged children with an education.
NDG runs two primary schools and a secondary school that houses over 500 Guatemalan children who would otherwise lack sufficient resources to attend Guatemala ́s public schools. From impact tours to coffee plantations, medical, and language immersion, students will get involved in community-based service projects with the opportunities to learn and work on first-hand experiences, where both participants and local community members are exposed to alternative forms of living.
Being completely immersed into diverse environments enables participants to experience, discuss, and understand social issues in a significant way; encouraging a broader understanding of the world and our role within the global context of development.
Find out more and join this program:
Peru
Dental Hygiene Project in Sacred Valley
An amazing opportunity for dental hygiene students to share their skills and profession with communities who cannot afford and do not have access to dental care.
Students, professors, and professionals in the field will provide much needed dental work during four days of clinics. The warm people of Peru are grateful for these services and open their arms and hearts to the student groups volunteering and providing these opportunities.
At the clinic, students will divide into groups to ensure every team includes all dental professions. We set up our clinics in easily accessible public locations to help those most in need. Along with dental work, students will help educate the community and provide everyone with dental hygiene products.
Find out more and join this program:
Costa Rica
Current Projects
Cahuita National Park Service Projects
The group will work with local naturalist guides on various projects inside the national park including – beach cleanup and garbage removal, installation of garbage containers, trail maintenance and painting of ranger stations.
Cahuita Elementary School Service Projects
Each student will be assigned a local elementary student who they will work with for 30 minutes per day Monday – Friday with English conversation and cultural exchange. Additionally, we will have the opportunity of working with the students in the school’s community garden, recycling center and arts and crafts classes.
Cahuita Murals & Paintings Service Project
Students will work alongside local artists on community murals portraying educational messages, positivity, self-esteem, respect and love for one another.
Caribbean Cultural Center Service Project
Students will work alongside local artisans learning how to make natural cosmetics, cultivate medicinal plants, make artisanal jewelry out of natural products, learn traditional music and dance, as well as traditional Caribbean cooking lessons. The Caribbean Cultural Center’s mission is To Sustain & Preserve Culture Through the Sharing of Knowledge.
Cahuita Community Fruit Tree Planting Service Project
The group will work with local students and our team of naturalist guides to plant various fruit trees throughout Cahuita. The fruits are later available for the community and at the local elementary school.
Cahuita is a small town of just over one thousand inhabitants located on the southern Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. The population is a mix of primarily Afro-Caribbean, Indigenous Bribri and Mestizo people. Cahuita National Park hosts daily visitors from around the world. The park is considered one of Costa Rica’s most beautiful and diverse national parks and is the only National Park that operates solely on donations. Additionally, the park encompasses Costa Rica’s largest coral reef.
The Study Abroad Association’s annual Service Learning on Sustainability & Community Development will show the powerful effect that collaborative service learning programs can have on communities when implemented with ideas directly from the community and continually repeated in a sustainable way.
We look forward to welcoming you to Costa Rica and having you be part of this life-enriching program.
Find out more and join this program:
Italy
Current Projects
Baobab Experience
Baobab Experience is an NGO supporting the first reception of immigrants, which often arrive directly from the ports of landing where they have been identified by registering their fingerprints. Most of them are war refugees, exhausted and separated from their families, they have been victims of torture and trafficking, often shipwrecked after attempting to cross the Mediterranean. Unfortunately, upon their arrival in Rome, the only thing waiting for them is life on the street.
Baobab Experience provides:
- Emergency shelter (tents, sleeping bags, pillows, and blankets)
- Food distribution for lunch and dinner
- Supplies for cooking by yourself (food, pans, wood, etc.)
- Information on basic services
- Distribution of clothing, shoes and underwear (once every two weeks)
- Legal and social information
- Medical and psychological assistance
- First aid
- General medical visits
- Psychological support
- References for medical services
- Information on the right to healthcare in Italy
Casa Scalabrini
The students will have the chance to connect and work alongside the 3rd level immigrant in various tasks:
- Cook together various cousins around the world
- Participate to a radio episode about immigration
- Clean and maintain the garden
- Curriculum and english activities
All those initiatives has the main scope to raise funds for Casa Scalabrini, Helps the immigrants to get integrated into the local community and sensibilize the issue of immigration.
Greece
Current Projects
PRAKSIS ADRESS
PRAKSIS ADRESS has been created in order to respond with decency to a basic need –that of clothing– of our fellow citizens facing hard times.
Impact Hub
In Athens (Greece), we have teamed up with Impact Hub. This is a unique experience for social entrepreneurship, marketing and business students to learn more about the process of social enterprise. In fact, after working on a specific task to improve a chosen business, the students will visit the actual project to monitor the impact created. https://athens.impacthub.net/
In Crete
Archelon Turtle project
https://www.archelon.gr/index_eng.php
Since 1983, the primary objective of ARCHELON, the Sea Turtle Protection Society of Greece has been to protect the sea turtles and their habitats in Greece through monitoring and research, developing and implementing management plans, habitat restoration, raising public awareness and rehabilitating sick and injured turtles.
SOS Children’s Village
Also, we have partnered with SOS Children’s Village in Vari (1 hour from Athens), where the students have the opportunity to visit the village, bring clothes and educational materials, practice a preliminary health check and organize various activities to educate the children: https://www.sos-childrensvillages.org/where-we-help/europe/greece/vari
Belize
Cornerstone Foundation
http://cornerstonefoundationbelize.org/
In Belize, we are working with Cornerstone Foundation, a community development organization dedicated to improving the lives of youth and adults in San Ignacio and Santa Elena, Belize. They are committed to offering programs that empower individuals and better our community through education, awareness, and support.
Tutoring, Sports and Recreation, Feeding program and meal prep, community garden, theater, music, community mural paintings,
assistance with homework, cultural sharing and volunteering at the school.
Art and crafts workshop with the kids. Instead of a monetary donation we collect much-needed school supplies which are much more affordable in the states and donate them to the foundation and the local elementary schools.
Find out more about our sustainable effort in Belize:
Chile
Earthship Music School
In Easter Island, we have participated in the Earthship Music School project to give a better future to local children living in a sustainable eco-village built using recycled materials: http://earthship.org/easter-island.
Internationally
In every country we operate in, we select one primary school that is in great need and assist them. We bring our groups to visit this school and interact with the school children with games, arts, and crafts, music and dance, cultural exchange, sports and English classes. Students from the US participating in the study abroad program are asked to bring donations of school supplies, art supplies, sports equipment, educational toys, etc. Updated lists of needed donations are provided prior to each trip.
Do you have a meaningful project that is near to you that you would like to support?
Please send us an email and tell us more about this project. We can build a faculty-led or service learning program around it that supports the local community, while raising awareness through students and other visitors: info@localhost
Do you have a project close to you that you would like to support?
Please send us an email and tell us more about this project. We can build a faculty-led or service learning program around it that support the local community, while raising awareness through students and other visitors: info@localhost
