Programming Philosophy

Community-building through Group Living
On most Amizade journeys, group living shapes the experience. Individuals from various places come together to live among a new community. Serving, learning, and exploring among a small group of committed individuals is a chance to make decisions about the way a community should function.

On another level, you will be exploring a new community in it’s living, breathing reality. The chance to connect to a community which may be very different from your home is eye-opening. In experiencing how the community functions, you’ll ask the reflective question of “what is my community?” More importantly, “how do I participate and shape my own community?”

It is this exploration of the meaning of community and your role within it that will challenge and inspire you both abroad and when you return.

Confronting Life
As cultures come together through a service project, real-life issues become present. Volunteers share their stories and ideas about their home community with those they are visiting. Community members share their culture with volunteers – traditions, values, and struggles.

The service experience is compounded by the difficult issues you will confront such as poverty, access to education/nutrition/technology, oppression, conflict, disenfranchisement, hunger, and human suffering. While volunteers are confronted with these powerful and alarming experiences, they will be inspired by community, sustainability, grassroots resistance, creativity, and the incredible multitude of ways that people work to make our world a better place.

Volunteers will necessarily begin to discern models for their own lives and communities.