On May 24, 2022, our fifteen students from the University Writing Program at the University of Florida (UF) got up early, boarded our transport bus with our site coordinator, Kgopotso Molapisane (aka, KG), and headed southeast down the N2, leaving Cape Town’s City Bowl in the rearview mirror. One of the most important days of our study abroad program had finally come. This Tuesday morning, our students would commute to the suburbs and townships of the Cape Flats to meet with our partnering nonprofit organizations (NPOs) in person for the first time. The objective was straightforward, though complex. The NPOs would be orienting our students to the hands-on work they would be doing, providing the students with more in-depth knowledge of the NPOs; our students would then take on writing and communications tasks to advance the NPOs’ projects and missions.

For the next four weeks, our students worked toward that end. Throughout the Cape Flats, student groups served with six NPOs. They helped, for instance, to build permaculture systems, provided early childhood education and mentoring, and assisted in renovating youth centers and women’s safehouses. As they gained experience, the students began communications projects — drafting grants, designing feature stories and websites, and composing social media campaigns for service events. Both before and during their service, our students took two courses, Writing with Nonprofits and Power, Policy, and Protest, supplemented with guest faculty from UF and the Universities of Cape Town, the Western Cape, and Stellenbosch. Through these courses our students gained proficiency in technical NPO writing along with an understanding of the broader historical and sociopolitical contexts of South Africa and its social welfare system, which includes more than 127,000 nonprofit institutions (NPIs), including our NPOs (Department of Statistics South Africa, 2015).

From our own point of view as program leads, this is the beginning of the story of our program, UF in Cape Town: Writing for Change with Nonprofits. But the longer, more comprehensive and complex narrative is one that will be told in this chapter by all our partners. And our story will span the entire duration of our program, from its initial development to our post-program evaluation. This chapter is a coauthored narrative. To tell our story, we speak together as instructors, onsite coordinators, NPO directors, and students. This chapter shares how we built and experienced a writing-focused, service-learning study abroad (WFSLSA) program in Cape Town, South Africa. Our hope is that this story provides a blueprint for instructors, NPOs, and coordinators of study abroad programs endeavoring to develop a similar service-learning program with writing or communications components, particularly in the global South or in developing countries.

We aim for this narrative to serve as a pragmatic and critically grounded guide for developing a WFSLSA program. We outline our program’s three main stages: the development stage, the run stage, and the post-program evaluation stage. Toward this end, we demonstrate how, whenever possible, each stage requires careful, continual networking and reciprocation between all stakeholders: instructors, institution and onsite coordinators, NPOs, and students. But we want this to be more than just a guide. We also aim for our narrative to be an advocation for service-learning study abroad programs in the global South and in developing countries that, by the nature of including writing- or communications-focused work, can be made more mutually reciprocal — and ultimately, more useful — to all stakeholders involved.

The Development Stage

Reviewing scholarship on service-learning and international service-learning (ISL)

The story of UF’s beginnings in Cape Town’s goes back to 2019, when we began teaching writing courses with service-learning components. We started out with a question: “Could we engage students directly in organizations that serve outside of the university and have students write for both those organizations and about their service experiences?”

As a test case, we designed a course at UF entitled Words Matter: The Discourse of Public Engagement, in which students join organizations serving Gainesville, Florida — either local NPOs or UF-registered student service groups. Students take part in the work of these organizations as new, nonexpert members, then produce writing that interrogates the concept of the “town and gown.” Our course’s premise was to identify ways that we as teachers and students could close the historical divide between the university and the town in terms of reciprocating knowledge and service-work, such as volunteerism and advocacy in communities (Bortolin, 2011, p. 49; Bruning et al., 206, pp. 126-127; Gavazzi, 2015, p. 2). To this end, our course had two writing goals that later informed our study abroad program:

1. produce documents that community organizations could use for their own initiatives,
2. and write with these organizations to prioritize their views and knowledge of local issues.

All of this work was a way of inviting organizations to tell us, as university members, how we should contribute to their initiatives and how we should conduct service for them.

This local course became part of the foundation on which we built the UF in Cape Town program. Scholarship on the town-and-gown relationship argues that not consulting community partners while building service-learning curricula leads to outcomes that tend to privilege student learning over community benefit, or that elide community input altogether. The importance of community input is even more consequential in the international context of a study abroad program. As Bortolin (2011) shows, up until the last decade, the very discourse of service-learning scholarship “creates an understanding of the community as a passive recipient of the university’s more active agency in designing and implementing community-based projects” (p. 50). He reiterates, with others, that “advocates of campus-community engagement suggest a need for knowledge to be co-created with, rather than for the community” (Bortolin, 2011, p. 53; d’Arlach et al., 2009). More recent studies reinforce this directive. As Gavazzi (2015) notes, “campus planners cannot discern the future requirements of their host communities if they do not know what those stakeholders want and need from their local institution of higher learning” (p. 7). We argue that such a deficit in networking poses the same consequence in ISL.

What we found when designing our subsequent study abroad program is that community members value the concept of reciprocal networking when setting program goals. To us, this is paramount to ethical ISL. But during the design phase of our study abroad program, we faced a challenge. As Doughty (2020) recently points out through a study in South Africa, there remains a lack of ISL scholarship that takes into account “the host community’s perspective on service-learning experience” (p. 2). Other South African scholars have called for this. For instance, Mabel Erasmus (2011) asks for better and more balanced peer-to-peer reciprocity between study abroad programs and their host communities. She claims that “there is still a need to find a more balanced approach (Furco, 1996) to potential International Service Learning outcomes, namely, between (a) learning and development outcomes for students (e.g., globally competent citizenship), and (b) service or other outcomes for host country community participants (not to be referred to as ‘beneficiaries’ or ‘recipients’)” (Erasmus, 2011, p. 350). Even so, we find a deficit of scholarship that actually demonstrates how feedback and points of view of partnering NPOs and communities can be incorporated into ISL curricula.

So, we considered UF in Cape Town a trial run. A reciprocity model is precisely what we wanted to start working on internationally and ground our program in — networking with community organizations, building relationships with them to inform our service, listening to how we should serve while also offering our own ideas for service. It was not until right before our program launched in 2022 that new scholarship emerged calling for a paradigm shift in the reciprocity model, work we could use as a touchstone for implementing reciprocation. Referencing ISL programs in the global South, Gregory et al. (2022) echo Erasmus (2011) in claiming:“what we are calling for is a fundamental paradigm shift in how we conceive, design, and implement these programs, one which centers on community learning, where visitors and hosts meet on a more equitable basis and learn from each other” (pp. 2-3).

Ultimately, we envisioned — and still envision — UF in Cape Town as a test run for interrogating a few questions that remain gaps in the literature. We framed these questions as our program’s goals: could stakeholder feedback can be gained and acted on, and could a writing focus in a service-learning study abroad program serve a reciprocation model? Could stakeholder feedback make student writing useful to our partnering NPOs, even if students are building expertise? How can we best network with our NPOs so that they inform us of how our writing can best serve them? And toward this goal, how can we best network with our other partners — our home university and faculty at other institutions, our onsite provider, and our students? We present our story as recommendations for building a program on a reciprocal networking model, while acknowledging that program development always entails its own specificities, and requires continuous networking.

Networking to build a program that responds to locational need

Our first full week in Cape Town, in which our students attended classes and served with their NPOs, was, to say the least, eye-opening — for our students and for ourselves. Our perception of experiencing the program shifted as often as Cape Town’s weather. Feelings of accomplishment would run up against exhaustion, puzzlement, frustration. One challenge was the degree of adaptability that our program demanded: students took two writing courses two to three times a week, took part in numerous educational experiences, and then had to balance all of this with loading up in the van three or four days out of the week to practice applying their coursework to writing for their NPOs. Working with the NPOs is, in itself, challenging — changing schedules, shifts in personnel, and public concerns about safety all demand adaptability.

From a development perspective, what held our program together were the networks we had built with our partners prior to arriving. But strong networking does not end with the development stage. This is only the beginning. Networks are built during the development stage so that the program maintains continuous input by NPOs about day-to-day operations during the run stage. This enables the program to account for adaptability. For service programs in the global South, like Cape Town, program plans must be adaptable according to each NPO’s daily needs and location — the work needs and staffing of an NPO can change daily, their ability to carry out community projects depends on public safety that day, and daily variables like load-shedding (periods of planned blackout for energy conservation) can alter the day’s work plans. As we quickly found, NPOs that are fully functional one day may not be in the same situation the next day. Staying connected to the NPOs was paramount; they helped us plan for and navigate eventualities.

Networking with campus centers, programs, or units, and with the study abroad vendor (SAV)

The core of UF in Cape Town is service; this is what our curriculum centers on. Building strong networks requires obtaining input from partners. For us, the most important partners were our six NPOs in Cape Town. However, approaching the NPOs required some preparational networking; we wanted to approach them by presenting a clear but flexible curriculum, adjustable according to their needs and locality.

An effective approach to working with NPOs is thus to first network with any and all campus partners: an international- or service-learning center, units, or programs that either run ISL, specialize in your program’s content, or have connections to your program’s location. In our case, this was the UF International Center (UFIC) and a few departmental units (discussed in subsequent sections). The IC manages study abroad programs and connects program developers with study abroad vendors (SAVs); SAVs specialize in running particular kinds of programs and in specific countries. We recommend “shopping” for an SAV based on their ability to design your type of program and your location (ask for sample programs and speak with centers, faculty, and students who have used the SAV). We chose CIS Abroad as our SAV because CIS specializes in ISL and came recommended by the IC and colleagues; CIS’s partnering organization, Edu Africa, provides onsite coordination right in Cape Town, run by Capetonians. Local personnel were a must-have for us.

CIS Abroad and Edu Africa were instrumental to our program design. After reviewing our syllabi and writing assignments, CIS sent us a list of prospective NPOs and a program itinerary. We began reviewing the NPOs’ missions, their service needs, and their locations. The variance in our NPOs influenced us to create flexible, adaptable assignments. Obtaining info on the NPOs early was crucial because it informed our assignment design. We started shaping an adjustable program draft, one that contained sufficient detail for us to be comfortable presenting it to the NPOs. We would then ask the NPOs for feedback based on their needs, especially requesting their input on possible paths for student writing. Each NPO ultimately determines which assignments are done and how these assignments should be modified according to the NPO’s needs.

Some assignments from each course overlap. This is intentional, a decision arrived at by consulting with our NPOs and SAV. The assignments in Power, Policy, and Protest show students how South Africa responded to the aftermath of apartheid with a social welfare system highly reliant on NPOs to deliver services that now respond to the inequities that still persist (Patel, 2012, p. 603). Power, Policy, and Protest provides background context so that students approach the technical writing in Writing in Nonprofits with a more informed sense of why and how the NPOs serve as they do. We enable students to create content that is usable for both courses; while NPOs will ask students to produce content for them that aligns with one or two of these assignments, we as instructors want options to supplement that writing with other professionalizing assignments.

Networking with NPOs via onsite SAV representatives

At this stage, it is important to personally connect with the SAV representatives who best know your program’s site; they are key to building your NPO networks. Our own experience really drove this point home for us. For our program, we were fortunate to be awarded a grant from UFIC to conduct a 10-day site visit to Cape Town, hosted by CIS Abroad / Edu Africa. It was our on-the-ground guides from Edu Africa, KG and Dave Fisher, who prepared us to speak with NPOs for design purposes.

Having in-country coordinators is imperative. In hindsight, we realized that our U.S.-based representatives from CIS Abroad were limited in the degree to which they could reasonably consult with us on program design. Onsite coordinators are the ones with the requisite locational, cultural, and personal knowledge that enable faculty program developers to fully and responsibly understand the nuances of the logistics, intercultural challenges, and aspects of safety that non-locals may not even know to ask questions about. In developing service programs in the global South, this caveat should not be understated. Cape Town was no exception. If your SAV does not have an onsite rep, we recommend that you ask them to connect you with NPOs as soon as possible in the design process, or that you consult the directors of an established study abroad program at your site, whether from your institution or another.

KG and Dave of Edu Africa prepared us. Our questions for them remain persistent:

Which NPO directors are programmatic, and which are more informal?

How many hours per week are reasonable for our students to serve with the NPOs?

Which townships pose the most challenges for students to serve in?

KG and Dave prepared us to build relationships with NPOs by actually preparing us to live in Cape Town.

Networking with NPOs

KG and Dave set us up for the fine-tuning of UF in Cape Town, arranging for us to actually sit down with our NPOs. We spent a week’s worth of crisp, late-fall days with KG and Dave, driving out to the suburbs and townships of Athlone, Khayelitsha, Strand, Retreat, and elsewhere. In the offices and on the grounds of our NPOs, we talked with directors and personnel, presenting our program’s objective, but most of all listening and trying to build rapport. This is the kind of networking we advocate for. By networking, we do not just mean asking how, when, and where our students could serve. We mean building personal relationships with NPO directors and, as much as possible, getting to know their personnel, locations of service, and communities.

Through this experience, we learned two valuable lessons about networking. First, the ethos of an NPO, insofar as how the NPO perceives its mission, situation, and operation, is influenced by the personalities of its leadership; second, an NPO’s needs may shift, or be entirely different from what was described by the SAV. These two caveats interrelate, and should be kept at the fore when networking with NPOs.

One moment in our own story drives this point home; we’ll frame it as a point of departure for recommendations on networking with NPOs. On our fifth day in Cape Town, we met with an NPO whose mission had drastically changed in the one-year period between when CIS Abroad provided us with its description and when we met in person with its director in the suburb of Retreat. In response to COVID-19, the NPO had changed its name and begun to expand its reach; the director informed us that the NPO now required different kinds of labor out in the townships — some of it physically and emotionally challenging. Her NPO was also undergoing a complete rebranding. Additionally, due to the turnover of study-abroad program help (one inimical aspect of service that we address in later sections), the NPO needed a revamped web presence, including documentation for its usernames/passwords, templates for content creation, and coherence in campaign content. And on top of this, the director expressed concerns about the safety of volunteers in public, due to recent crime. She had real concerns about the demands that her NPO would make on our students. Importantly, she was somewhat hesitant, even reticent, to map out a clear plan for student service, even though she desired it.

In contrast, just three days earlier we had met with another NPO director out in the well-kept suburb of Strand. For this NPO, the students’ work was primarily in communications done in-office, with occasional forays to fundraising events in suburbs and townships; it did not include extensive immersive work in townships. The director verified that students’ work would be as described, and without the variables of public safety to account for. Clearly, planning with this NPO would be more straightforward. This was not simply because this NPO’s scope and aims were easier to define in this moment, but because resources, safety, and service needs were not ever-changing factors for the NPO in Strand as they were for the NPO in Retreat.

Out in Retreat, we needed more time with the director. We asked deeper questions.

Would our students’ service help this NPO attain more independent control of their communications once we left?

Would our students be resilient enough to serve, and would it be safe enough given the status of crime in the area?

The director’s disposition reflected genuine concerns, and we needed to respond. Understanding the personalities of the NPO’s director and personnel — their temperament toward what they know, understand, or perceive about their NPO and their community’s situation — should be the starting point for asking questions to design the program, or for even determining whether an NPO is feasible to partner with. But it is also helpful to consult your onsite SAV coordinators to see if they corroborate, qualify, or contend with the position of the NPO. (See Appendix 1 for a representative list of questions whose sequence reflects our general approach to networking with NPOs to design the program for them. We suggest a fieldwork approach of active note-taking with repeated follow-up.)

This was our point of departure for designing the program’s itinerary. We selected assignments that fit the writing needs of each NPO, and assignments that supplemented the NPO’s work by providing them the requisite writing competencies. This also prompted us to reach back out to our wider networks — our SAV, UF’s Center for African Studies, and contacts at South African universities — to add activities that would supplement students’ service work and knowledge of South Africa. We adjusted site visits, guest lectures, and excursions around NPO work to support students’ preparation for service and to prioritize their relationships with the NPOs.

We would emphasize one point about this approach to initiating networks with NPOs. Demonstrate to the NPO that you intend to reciprocate. You are there to learn from the NPO and community about how or if your program can make constructive impacts on their terms. This approach is an ethical reformation to ISL. As Gregory et al. (2021) argue, “reforming international service-learning to take community impacts seriously requires institutional as well as personal commitment to understanding the place, and how communities are affected by students through their presence and what they do” (p. 11); further, “every effort must be made to place students and faculty in a subordinate position to people in the host communities, and to have the host community define appropriate activities and behaviors from students as well as program development” (p. 13). Building long-lasting, trusting relationships with NPOs requires putting their needs first.

Networking with and among students

Recruiting the right students for an ISL program is imperative. When we began trying to wrap our heads around recruiting, one concern was clear: the reputation of our program with host communities hinges on whether we brought committed, conscientious, and critically minded students. Networking with students for recruitment entails getting to know students. And not just their ambitions to take part in a service program, or their skill sets, or their majors/minors — it entails understanding their personalities well enough to gauge their adaptability, their resiliency, and their commitment to pushing themselves to work in the very different conditions of a developing country.

Recruiting is challenging. ISL programs operate best when the ratio of students per NPO is kept as low as possible; thus, while recruiting the minimum number of students is not the most financially feasible, it is practical from the standpoints of planning, coordinating, and teaching (Gregory et al., 2021, p. 14). Consider this tradeoff when recruiting. As a starting point, we recommend casting a broad net to obtain interested students, increasing the likelihood of obtaining appropriate students during what should be, as much as possible, a stringent review process. For us, networking helped with both of these stages, though we still ended up being challenged by some students who were ultimately unprepared, which will be discussed briefly here and more fully in the run-stage sections.

Our search for students began broadly. We attended every study abroad fair with application options, and had students provide contact info to follow up for information sessions. We emailed program flyers and application links to the chairs, directors, coordinators, and advisors of over 30 departments and programs. We used UFIC and other university-wide programs, like UF Beyond 120 – Experiential Learning, to publish our program application in newsletters. We forwarded our program info to faculty to share with students, and we did in-class presentations.

We then began group info sessions and one-on-one interviews. These stages are vital. Our group info sessions presented the particularities of our program — it is a service program, in a developing country with drastically stark differences in wealth and living conditions, and with very different norms of communication and attitudes toward social aspects like race and gender. We also described our partnering NPOs and their missions. Here, it is crucial to demonstrate to students — through the NPOs’ provided info, images, maps, and video walking tours — what it will take to serve onsite, and what it is like to live in Cape Town and work in its suburbs and townships. This is the stage in which it is important to start reading students’ interests and impressions; do students understand the level of investment that such a program requires?

Coupled with or following this stage, we found that the one-on-one interview is useful not only for reviewing students for fit, but also for building networks with and among students. During this process, we recorded student responses, not simply detailing their responses to our questions, but reviewing their personalities, demeanors, and values — the subjective aspects which could inform our sense of their suitability. (See Appendix 2 for sample questions for interviewing students.)

When you have identified potentially suitable students, we recommend adding one more review step that, in fact, we learned to add for future iterations through KG, our onsite coordinator. Enable onsite coordinators to review with you. KG’s insights below demonstrate that for programs in the global South, in which infrastructural, technological, and cultural norms are markedly different, the importance of preparing students for these aspects cannot be understated. One overarching caveat that should always be considered: we and our students represent our institution, and our country; how prepared we are, matters.

Connecting students with NPOs

We also recommend connecting students with NPOs during the review process. Our approach was to provide forms for students to rank the NPOs they wanted to serve with. And upon any NPO’s request, we forward the NPO student profiles for selection review. We also ask the NPOs if they would prefer to speak with students directly. Our view is that students cannot know enough about the NPO’s personnel, work, culture, locations, and challenges before they depart.

This is the moment when the excitement starts to build, as we start connecting students with one another. We forward students forms for coordinating flights together, and we encourage them to set up WhatsApp or GroupMe threads for travel and socializing. We hold face-to-face and Zoom meetings closer to departure for updates.

Then, the moment arrives. Planes depart. Fourteen to 24 hours later, bleary-eyed, we see the northeast side of Table Mountain rearing up, cloud-capped, as we head west down Settler’s Way toward Cape Town’s City Bowl.

The Run Stage

Finding the role of faculty in the program

Halfway up Lion’s Head peak at around 5:30 am, when it was still dark outside, one of my students froze in sheer panic on a cliff face while scaling the 669-meter mountain in Cape Town. She gripped the rebar staples bolted to the boulders, but had made the crucial mistake of looking down at the city dwarfed below in the pre-dawn morning. Her arms and legs began to tremble as she emphasized that she could not continue. Other students were waiting for us at the top, so I could not turn around with her. Since it was so early in the morning, calling for help seemed useless. I settled on the truth, telling her that if I (an out-of-shape 30-plus-year-old) could do this, she could, too. My logic worked. A deep breath sobered her from fear, and she hauled herself up the staples. We all summited in one piece.

When I think of my experience as an instructor of a WFSLSA in Cape Town, this memory represents how I thought my role would function. Ultimately, as a writing instructor, I would coach my students through the experience of living, working, and writing in Cape Town, but like the mountain Natalie clung to, Cape Town would be students’ primary source of instruction — it would teach them in ways I could not. As students faced new challenges in the communities they were serving, I would provide support, but the NPOs, guest lectures, and excursions — essentially, the program itself — would teach them most of what they needed to know about serving in Cape Town. In some ways this was true, and their time in the program taught them more than any one instructor could. I learned, however, that serving as faculty in a WFSLSA program demands much more network management than I anticipated.

My initial perception of my role in a short-term study abroad program was a bit myopic and, in part, resulted from the lack of information about the function of faculty in short-term study abroad programs. In their research in the field of nursing, Davis and Spoljoric (2019) remark that “faculty involvement in study abroad programs is seen as key to a successful student trip, but literature on the faculty role is surprisingly limited” (p. 314). Models and examples to consult are few and far between, and even more limited are models of faculty leading writing-focused or service-learning programs. In a study of eight study-abroad faculty, Goode (2008) found that they predominantly viewed themselves as logistical coordinators, functioning more like administrators, with little recognition of their academic roles or the “intercultural dimension” of their work while abroad (p. 29). More recent studies find that faculty in successful programs consider themselves cultural mentors rather than coordinators. Faculty help students “better understand the intercultural nature” of their experiences by “providing feedback relevant to their level of intercultural development” (Niehaus, et al., 2018). In order to have a successful program, faculty must fully realize and embrace their roles as cultural facilitators rather than as simply organizers and coordinators of a program.

In my experience, the roles of faculty-as-administrator or faculty-as-cultural mentor are not mutually exclusive. The instructor of a WFSLSA program functions predominantly as a networker and mediator between all stakeholders in the program — NPO personnel, onsite coordinators, locals within the community, and students. Maintaining these networks may seem to privilege logistics over cultural mentoring, but this networking is intimately connected to the intercultural dimensions of the program. Because the cultural environment informs and impacts these networks, the logistical and academic roles faculty fulfill in WFSLSA cannot be separated from their roles as cultural facilitators. Upon my arrival in Cape Town, I communicated with students, NPO directors, onsite coordinators, and locals within the community using Whatsapp, and I hope the narrative analysis of this record in the sections that follow will help faculty build and navigate reciprocally beneficial networks in their own programs.

Maintaining Networks and Cultural Mentoring

Upon arrival in Cape Town, my primary role was to help students build lifestyle management networks in their new environment, including health care, communication, and transportation resources. When students caught food poisoning, needed medications replaced, or contracted COVID, I coordinated their transportation to the hospital with our onsite coordinators, the mailing of their medications, or food deliveries during COVID quarantines. Helping students develop new networks within their new community did become a priority at times, as some of their experiences impacted their ability to focus and function in class and with their NPOs; doing so, however, helped facilitate their cultural learning, as these new networks often intersected with the historical legacy of Apartheid.

Students’ experiences with the transportation networks were unique to living and working in Cape Town. For example, due to the legacy of Apartheid, Cape Town’s city planning makes transportation incredibly difficult during certain times of the day. There’s one way into the city and one way out. Arriving late to a departure time means risking hours stuck in traffic, and at times, traffic was still unavoidable. Students had to get up early and arrive home late, and the long hours in traffic and punctual early mornings were a cultural adjustment for some students. After discussing the historical origins of this inconvenience, students adjusted their perception and used the long van rides to and from their NPOs to strengthen their networks with each other and with the onsite coordinators, KG and Mark Ascott-Evans. Students formed their own WhatsApp groups with their van members, and a group identity formed around their van experiences. Students entertained themselves in the van by singing songs or playing games, or they slept. Coaching students on the cultural meaning of their experiences helped them form new networks with each other and with their onsite coordinators.

Similarly, communication between students and their families back home was initially limited due to site-specific complications. The wifi infrastructure in our Garden Centre apartments and in the classroom was more limited than many students were accustomed to. At times, the wifi did not work at all, which disrupted students’ networks back home and contributed to instances of homesickness and anxiety, as they were unable to routinely check in with their loved ones. I organized the circulation of dongles among the students; these provided more consistent wifi access for students to communicate with family and to complete their course and NPO work.

Ultimately, faculty are required to help students form and maintain networks in their new environment, and a majority of my time during the first few weeks was devoted to developing and managing health care, transportation, and communication networks for and with students. Because of our discussions, students very much believed that the program, especially the faculty, should have prepared and accounted for these disruptions ahead of time. Ultimately, faculty are not only required to maintain these networks, but students expect them to as well.

Maintaining networks also took place in the classroom, and at times complemented or disrupted my delivery of course content. The academic networks we established with guest lectures supplemented course content, and students reported that these lectures were their favorite use of class time. We coordinated with the UF Center for African Studies to deliver a series of lectures from scholars of South African history and culture, and a former colleague at Cape Town University conducted a walking tour of the University of Cape Town, highlighting the role of protest art in decolonizing higher education. These lectures prepared students for the challenges and limitations their NPOs may experience serving communities in the Cape Flats suburbs and townships.

These guest lectures helped fill gaps in my own content delivery that occurred due to limited wifi, NPO scheduling conflicts, and discussions with students. Plans for two of my lectures were canceled because we lacked either wifi or a projector, so I did have to adapt content to online formats that could be accessed outside of class when students could connect to wifi at a coffee shop. Finally, more class time than I anticipated was spent speaking informally with students about their NPO experiences, which cut into content delivery as well. For example, one group of students was unprepared for a public appearance they had to make at a high school. Students were asked by their NPO director to introduce themselves in front of a large audience of high schoolers, and they explained to me this experience was embarrassing and anxiety-inducing. Much of class time was devoted to processing these moments of cultural immersion and the challenges of professional and cultural communication.

Once students started volunteering with their NPOs, my role shifted to managing networks between NPO personnel and students.  Because we had students working in a variety of NPOs with varying leadership structures, some students had more direction and assistance from their NPOs than others. The students in NPOs with more organizational resources reported exceptional experiences with their NPOs. Students worked at community events, such as food drives, health fairs, and after school programs, and this extensive involvement helped them design effective communication documents.

Managing networks between NPOs with less structure was more difficult, and required me to intercede between students and NPOs to resolve issues. Two of our student groups reported that their NPO had nothing planned for them to do, and students not only felt like they were wasting their time, but that they were missing out on the immersive learning their peers experienced at other NPOs. Circumstances at this NPO had changed significantly since our initial site visit in March, and the roles and tasks NPO personnel had initially outlined for our students to complete were either no longer priorities or no longer possible given changes in the community. During our initial site visit in March, for example, one NPO had a series of educational programs planned for the community to combat gang violence. However, due to the increased gang violence from the stressors of a global pandemic, security issues prevented these initiatives, so students were unable to participate in the community as planned. While all NPOs experienced similar issues, access to leadership resources allowed some NPOs to adapt and manage students’ time more effectively. For example, one NPO had initially reported touring students on medical house calls so they could shadow physicians, but this was no longer possible due to increased gang violence. Students never reported any issues because these NPOs had resources to adapt to the changes.

Our onsite coordinators were invaluable resources, offering us and the students needed perspective. I spoke with KG or Mark every day, and they not only helped with the logistics of transporting students to and from excursions and their NPO work, but also helped me problem-solve. Because some students had less than satisfying experiences with their NPOs, our onsite coordinators helped me navigate options for our students. I made the decision with KG to switch three students to a different NPO during Week 4 of the program, when the original organization could not accommodate the students due to increased security risks in their neighborhood. This was less than ideal, and a solution that students felt came a bit too late in the program, but my networking with KG facilitated the switch so that all parties understood the changes. We highly suggest daily check-ins with onsite coordinators to gain their views on the status of NPOs’ situations, students’ dispositions and their work, and the degree to which students are prepared for specific situations.

As program directors we learned that that it is valuable to connect your onsite coordinators with students during the student-review process; further, it is valuable for program directors to check in daily with onsite coordinators about students’ real-time responses to all facets of the program. KG and I often discussed the demanding schedule and how students responded to the challenges of working with their NPOs. By Week 3, we realized that some students were struggling to put forth their best efforts at their NPOs because they did not like the work or the length of their work day. KG’s insights into the first iteration of our program have been highly valuable. He rightfully discussed with us strategies for better preparing students for what a service-learning study abroad experience entails, and we plan to implement a more rigorous review process for students as well as a more robust orientation. While we did have an extensive orientation program, we as faculty did not always know what to expect from students because this was the preliminary run of the program.(See Appendix 3 for optimizing students’ work with NPOs.)

Post-program evaluation stage

​​As Cape Town’s wintry, wet season set in at the end of June, we returned to our own wet season that is midsummer in Florida. Back at UF, we had a lot to review and think about. There was one certainty — as with any service-learning program, planning for UF in Cape Town would be a year-round activity. That is what the post-program evaluation stage should be — a year-round activity. We gave our students, our NPOs and partners, and ourselves a little breathing room; but we would follow up.

Some of our post-program evaluation was built right into the curriculum, including e-portfolios and self-reflection options, in which we would ask students about their program experience. But much of our evaluation required maintaining our networks. For instance, we created program evaluation surveys for the NPOs. Likewise, we keep in touch with our onsite coordinators for program design, but also informally as colleagues, in the pursuit of making our program more socially intimate. Former students attend info sessions for new applicants to share what was rewarding, what was challenging — and, importantly, to share how they have gone on to use the writing and communications materials they made for professionalization showcases. Part of our post-program review is gauging how UF in Cape Town provides our students with technical skills, transferable skills, and professional portfolio materials. (See Appendix 4 for final, broad recommendations on designing a writing-focused service-learning program in the global South.)

Appendices

Appendix 1. Networking with NPOs

Purview and context of the NPO

• Can you inform us of your NPO’s current mission, aims, and goals, and whether the NPOs directives or activities have changed recently, or may change?
• Can you show us around and walk us through the kinds of work your NPO personnel do on a daily basis?
  • Offer to visit non-office or offsite locations of service, at the discretion of the NPO.
• What is it like to live in the community or communities you serve? We would like to understand the experiences and challenges of the community members that you serve.
• Given these contexts of community and location, what are the main challenges your NPO faces in carrying out your work?

Communications and logistics

• Can we set up a medium of communication to stay in touch during the design- and run-stages of our program (SMS text, WhatsApp, GroupMe, phone/email etc.)?
  • As shown in subsequent sections, having real-time communications directly with NPOs, not just email, is vital for program coordination in the run-stage.
• Who are our points of contact for specific areas of service, and who will our students be working alongside?
  • Many NPOs have student coordinators or coordinators for specific service initiatives who are the daily points of contact for students.

Student service coordination

• Our students know that they will be doing hands-on service work ,which should provide them experiential knowledge to better produce writing and communications for you.
  • What are the hands-on service activities that you envision for our students?
  • What are the writing tasks that our students could assist with?
  • Would you prefer that we forward you lists of student profiles with their skills to help you choose which students would best work for you?
• What are your expectations for student work in terms of times of day, numbers of days per week, and hours per day?

Physical location, safety, and community

• Are there challenges or safety concerns for students serving in particular locations? What should students expect at particular sites?
• What do students need to know about interacting and conducting themselves appropriately with community members?
• How should students prepare for workdays, in terms of clothing and items to bring?

Continuous learning

• We want our program and our students to support your NPO. Is there anything that we have not yet touched on that will help us serve you best?
• Can you teach us and our students about your community while students work? Can you help us understand your local contexts and challenges from the point of view of its residents?

Appendix 2. Sample questions for interviewing students

Motivations for service/writing and your academic/career/personal development

• How do you see the service and writing activities of this program as fitting into your academic, career, or personal development or goals?
• Have you done service or volunteering before? What were the rewards and challenges?
• Have you ever written any these kinds of documents/assignments before? Are you comfortable learning some of these writing tasks while you are in the very process of employing them with your NPO?

Working with NPOs and in Cape Town

• From our descriptions, which NPOs are you drawn to and why?
• The work needs of our NPOs and their daily circumstances can change from day to day. Do you see yourself as someone who adapts to change well? Can you give an example of when you had to adapt to change?
• Cape Town is a modern city, but there are periods of load-shedding (scheduled power outages), internet service may not always be available, and living conditions in some of the townships are not what we are familiar with in the U.S. Are you willing to live in this environment for five weeks?

Intercultural communication and social norms

• Capetonians may discuss aspects of class, race, gender, disparities and so on in a much more candid and blunt way that we do in the U.S. Do you see yourself as someone who can adapt to different cultural contexts and keep composed in uncomfortable situations? Do you have an example of when you had to do so?

Appendix 3. Optimizing students’ work with NPOs

• Consult with NPOs directly before students arrive. For NPOs with less structure, request or develop together a weekly or daily schedule of tasks or events for students.
• Coordinate backup plans or alternative work options for students serving with NPOs that may experience abrupt changes to community circumstances.
• Prepare students for the variable experiences at different NPOs and have them develop strategies to optimize their time with their NPOs.
• Maintain consistent communication with Onsite Coordinators.

Appendix 4. Final recommendations on designing a WFSLSAP

• No iteration of the program will be exactly the same. In our case, Cape Town is a quickly modernizing city in a developing country. The political, economic, and social terrain can shift quickly. While NPOs are an integral part of South Africa’s complex social welfare system, their funding, organizational structure, environments, labor, and missions may change. An NPO that partners well one year may not be in that position next year, or even during the program itself. While maintaining networks is key for planning, so is building new networks year-round.
• Maintaining close connections and relationships for input — that is, building networks with all partners — is paramount, even though it is understood that shifts in the availability of NPOs, SAVs, and onsite coordinators often occur. Additionally, it is important to ask NPOs how many and what types of students they desire. It is beneficial to keep the number of partnering NPOs as low as possible while accounting for their desire for students, in order to minimize logistical strains and risks to safety.
• Make the curriculum for writing and daily itinerary flexible. Not only will the writing needs of each NPO be different, but an NPO’s needs often change. Additionally, the infrastructural challenges of your site (even regional aspects like the weather in Cape Town, for instance) will quickly make an inflexible itinerary useless.
• Reviewing applicants and preparing students should be done early and consistently. Ideally, program instructors and partners, like NPOs and SAV personnel, should weigh in on reviewing students. The review process should cover logistics and lifestyle management, and also gauge students’ academic preparation and interests so that these can be matched to prospective NPOs’ needs.

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