Student Stories

My classes have given me a unique perspective to see my time here. My core class, Service Learning in Community Development, is focused on both the service and the learning aspects of community development projects. It has allowed me to learn a great deal inside and outside the classroom, which in my opinion is the best way to learn. As part of the course, we are all assigned to volunteer six hours per week at a local social-welfare organization. This gives us the chance to apply in the field the theoretical concepts we learn in the classroom, and also take our field experience back to the classroom for reflection.

My site placement is at a place called Horizon House, which is a residential and therapeutic care center for the mentally-disabled. It is located in a suburb of Stellenbosch, and has 108 residents ages 19-68 with all different types of mental, physical and psychological disabilities. While I work with adults, the intellectual age of all the residents is between 6-10 years old.

I have been blessed with the chance to work most of my time one-on-one with one of the residents who suffers from bi-polar depression disorder. We have been assigned various jobs to do outdoors, with the ultimate goal of planting a vegetable garden and making a compost pile. Working with Rudi has taught me a lot about working with people different from myself, as I am confronted with language, cultural, and developmental obstacles, only to name a few. As we''ve started to become good friends, I can see that sometimes a community''s needs aren''t necessarily materially-based, but relational and represent abstract needs such as affection and dignity. And to break down the communication barrier, Rudi and I have made a sweet deal: he teaches me words in Afrikaans, and in exchange, I teach him how to woo women in both French and German.

This class has also given me a slightly different outlook on what my role is here as a student on study abroad. Being engaged in community service, and studying theories of community development, poverty alleviation, and transitional empowerment approaches has allowed me to learn, apply, and also observe the reality of the situation around me. It is my firm belief that South Africa, in a way, represents a microcosm of the world and all of the problems it is facing in a 21st century context. There is incredible cultural diversity, the clash between the developed and developing worlds, racism, violence, crime, corruption, environmental degradation, economic exploitation, massive inequality, and pandemic diseases all in one country. It certainly does not make life boring, being in the midst of it all.

— Carl, Williams College