Walking Together: Berkeley Carroll School’s India Experience
On the India program The Berkeley Carroll School ran with WLS in March, we tried something new. Something bold. And the result was amazing.
Over the last few years, Berkeley Carroll faculty and students have been wrestling with critiques of voluntourism. Even with thoughtful planning and execution, we felt that service projects were provoking hard conversations about our participation in what has been dubbed the Savior Industrial Complex. Even the word “service” itself struck us as problematic, reinforcing a dynamic in which there are “servers” in the active role and, on the other side of the equation, those “being served,” rendered passive by the limitations of language. The word “service” precludes equal partnership, the shared agency of multiple parties.
A few years ago I heard about a model being touted by Dr. Paul Farmer of Partners in Health and Steve Reifenberg, Executive Director of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Accompaniment, as the model is called, had been applied to international development, but it seemed to me a perfect fit for a WLS program. The basic idea of accompaniment is that everyone — every person, every community — is on a journey, and when we become accompagnateurs, we simply walk with our friends for a stretch of that journey. We don’t determine the route. We don’t diagnose problems, nor do we attempt to solve them. Perhaps we help our friends with a task that they’re engaged in. Or perhaps not. We listen. We learn. We build trust and friendship that can be sustained over time.
It’s easy to get wrapped up in the metaphors and philosophical ideas with accompaniment. What would it look like in practice? We decided to give it a shot.
Our India program takes place in Heranjalu, the home community of our incredible country coordinator, Krishna Pujari. Each morning students arrived at Krishna’s house from their homestays, and after some activities facilitated by the Leaders of the Day, our dance instructor arrived to teach us the intricate steps of the yakshagana, a centuries-old South Indian tradition that combines dance, music, and poetry to tell the stories of the great Hindu epics. There was laughter, and sometimes apprehension, but most of all an appreciation for the opportunity to learn about a revered religious tradition with deep roots in our host community. Dance practice was sometimes followed by peanut harvesting alongside our hosts, or a walk to a temple or new area of the village. In the late afternoons, after lunch with homestay families and journaling time, we would walk to the primary school to play games or meet with local leaders to hear their perspective on development in the area. But there was no project, no talk of “service.”
On the last night, yakshagana artists from the local temple applied stylized makeup to students’ faces and dressed them in elaborate layered costumes, and Berkeley Carroll students performed the yakshagana in a show that also featured students from the primary school. More than 500 members of the community sat in plastic chairs, on the ground, or stood in the back to watch and cheer the performances. On our way out of town the next morning, en route to the train station, a man waved down one of our rickshaws and leaned in the driver’s window. “Thank you,” he said to the students sitting in back. “The yakshagana is very important to us. Last night meant a lot to our community.”
Our students didn’t return home able to boast about the structure they built or the community they “helped.” Instead, they returned able to reflect with depth and humility about the community they came to know and respect, about the families they connected to, and the strength of community institutions in Heranjalu. They’re engaging in fundraising now that we’ve returned, with much clearer ideas about why and for whom they’re making these efforts than would have been the case before the program. Accompaniment made sense to us as an idea, but our March program showed us that it works in practice to foster in young leaders a more ethical and collaborative perspective on how to work together to solve the world’s most pressing problems.
— Brandon Clarke, Assistant Head of School for Programs, The Berkeley Carroll School
