Outcomes for Community Partners in an Unmediated Service-Learning Program

Pitzer College's Spanish service-learning program is unmediated by local social service organizations. It directly places students with immigrant Mexican families living in nearby Ontario, California. Based on the concept that language is a social practice and culture should be the core of language teaching, it has developed long-term, mutually beneficial relationships among college and community partners. A space has been created to support dialogues across race, class, and privilege boundaries. This article focuses on the program's impact on community participants, whose homes are becoming neighborhood hubs of an informal informational resource network. Perhaps the weak ties between two seemingly incompatible social networks account for the ease with which this process was established. A program originally centered on pedagogy is slowly effecting small-scale social change and community development. (Author)