Service Learning Log

In the past few weeks, we have worked on jumpstarting our project to work with YAYA to assist the Fellsmere farmworker community with their garden. This has entailed talking with YAYA about what is needed, attending YAYA meetings, as well as conducting our own meetings about this project. Lastly, we have planned fundraisers to take place in the coming week. While this sounds simple here, in practice this was much more difficult than it sounds. Organizing 19 people (now 17) to do something all together is messy, especially in regards to scheduling. However, we have done our best to move forward with our project.

Another difficulty encountered with this project is something Trinh called “White Cancer”* (Trinh 54). When I read the section on this, which was while we were in the early stages of project planning/coordinating, I immediately thought of our project. We were going about our project with exactly the attitude described by Trinh, and then later by Russo where she calls on us to join movements rather than try and spearhead them. We wanted to save these people from their misfortunes, mistakenly seeing ourselves as almost rescuers. I may be slightly exaggerating, but basically we were going about trying to work for farmworkers rather than with farmworkers. Thankfully, we realized the errors in our thinking and starting working with the farmworker organizations.

Along with a greater understanding of Trinh’s work as a result of service learning, I also have gained a new respect for those who organize across national boundaries, as we in the class have found that it is difficult. Communicating across the world has not been as speedy or efficient as we in the class hoped, and this primarily is what has increased my regard for those who operate across borders, as I have a slight understanding of the effort that must be put into it.

*I use the term “white cancer” because it was the phrase Trinh used in her book. However, I think it was more of a cancer caused by our position of academic and class privilege rather than stemming from race, though race may also have played a part.

Trinh, T M.-H. Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. Print.