Living and Learning in Community
Throughout this past year I’ve learned a lot about what it means to live and learn in community. From Casa de la Mateada to Community-Based Learning, I have been both challenged and embraced by a sense of community and what it means to live and learn alongside the ‘other’. Last semester I was abroad in Córdoba, Argentina, with the Casa de la Mateada program. Casa’s main goal is to foster community building with the other students you are living with, and with the people of Córdoba, specifically those at the various praxis sites in the city. My site was called La Luciérnaga, where young adults from the streets are given the opportunity to sell magazines and are offered various support services. Finding common ground with many of these young people was challenging in the best way, and forced me to confront aspects of my own life through a new lens. I come back from Córdoba with new friendships and gratitude to have been part of a community that extends so much farther than my own Casa experience.
CBL is very similar to Casa in the sense that it promotes community building both on campus and within the Worcester community. We are encouraged to learn from each other as CBL Interns, as well as to educate ourselves on the wider world by working with community partners in Worcester. Since my first year at Holy Cross I have volunteered with Ascentria Care Alliance with the Unaccompanied Refugee Minors Program. This opportunity has broken down my single story of what it means to be a refugee and also has taught me the value of learning through lived experience.
Creating a sense of community that transcends societal barriers and individual backgrounds is not always easy. However, it is through these relationships and shared moments that we are able to find a sense of belonging to each other and to the human experience. Mother Teresa once said that “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” I reference this quote to say that it is so easy to get caught up in our own reality and to forget about the world beyond us and our responsibility to those that face injustice and suffering. We so often forget to look past ourselves and to remember that we hold the power to go outside of our comfort zones to greet the ‘other’ and build relationship with that person.
I am so thankful to CBL and to Casa for having given me the opportunity to do just that. To learn beyond the classroom, beyond my peers and teachers, beyond my native language, and beyond my own life experience—to forge bonds and communities with people of various backgrounds and perspectives. I am a better person because of these opportunities and I have a greater sense of myself for realizing that my responsibility to the world is really my responsibility to the people around me, no matter where I situate myself in the world.
