From Arkansas to Patagonia, Students Document Volunteer Impact
Communications majors at Universidad Nacional del Comahue in Argentina are producing four multimedia packages for Partners’ news team, challenged to conduct some interviews in English and Portuguese. “Students learn through serving an institution,” Professor Erika Chrobak told Omar Gonzalez, a former student who interviewed her on Antena Libre, the University´s radio. “They’re motivated to participate because they’re actually helping Partners of the Americas while practicing professional communication.”
The service-learning volunteers are covering:
- Javaé language preservation in Brazil
- Pharmacy students’ indigenous and Western medicine outreach to remote towns
- “Guardians of the Birds,” a two-chapter education project gone global
- Cochabamba’s PartnersCampus mentoring, Comahue’s new PartnersCampus chapter
Virtual exchanges can spark real-world connections. Constanza Gimena, reporting on PartnersCampus UGurupi’s indigenous project, was invited by Professor Marcilene Araujo to visit the Javaé with her next summer. Constanza and her teammate, Andrea Saldivia, are figuring out how to travel from Patagonia to Brazil’s tropical savanna, just south of the Amazon rainforest.
More Listening: Interview with Professor Chrobak