During a recent service trip to Lima, Peru, I was initially struck by the absurdity of the entire endeavor. What more privileged thing could there be - flying hundreds of miles and paying upwards of a thousand dollars to essentially provide unskilled labor for a few days. My friend talked me into going through a combination of reasoning and persistent nagging. What finally convinced me to go was her remark that I would be able to meet the people I was helping, rather than passively donating money to some cause and forgetting about it. After the week in Peru, my feelings on the idea of service trips remain mixed, but I have been somewhat convinced of the value of such trips.

Over the course of a week, the 60 or so students from a few American universities built a concrete staircase which will significantly affect a few hundred people, and helped to provide medical services from dentistry to obstetric care to a few hundred more. Dozens of people, mainly women from the area worked alongside the students helping to complete the construction of the staircase. Many kids from the communities the mobile medical clinics visited learned about tooth brushing for the first time from the volunteers. When the group left, things were much the same as when they arrived, but perhaps a tiny bit better.

Though it does seem that the money put toward this effort could have been distributed more effectively, there are aspects of this type of trip that make them worthwhile. The most important is certainly the human interaction. There is a huge difference between sending money as an invisible benefactor and spending time and working with the people who will benefit from the work. It is very difficult to conceptualize facts and figures about the difficulties of those without privilege living far away. Actually meeting one person and getting to know them is much more powerful than hearing about a faceless mass regardless of how shocking the numbers may be. Making people who have access to more resources personally invested in global health helps to increase visibility of the issues among a wider audience and strengthens the commitment of those with more to those with less.

 

Reach Contributor Jaspar Abu-Jaber here.