Empathy to Impact: Student Voices on Global Citizenship Education & Community Engagement

Scott Jamieson: Welcome to the Empathy to Impact podcast.

Scott Jamieson: Today, we are visiting Collegio George Washington in Cartagena, Colombia.

Scott Jamieson: to talk about service learning, and my guests, Miranda and Fiorella, are students who just started high school, they're in grade 9, and we're actually going to be talking about a project they worked on when they were 8th grade students, and how they were able to use their learning to have a positive impact in their community.

Scott Jamieson: But before we start, I'm gonna pass over to them to say a quick hello, and introduce themselves.

Jessica Benitez: So, hi, my name's Mirela, I'm a 9th grade student now, and I'm so happy to be here with you, Scott, and thank you for the opportunity. Hi, my name is Miranda, I'm a 9th grade student too, and I'm very happy to be here with you.

Scott Jamieson: I am very happy to have you both, and really excited to learn more about what you guys have been up to.

Scott Jamieson: Service learning is a big deal at Kohoa, and it's so cool to see students as young as

Scott Jamieson: Preschool involved in service learning, and seeing these opportunities throughout the elementary and into middle school.

Scott Jamieson: Can you tell us about what you guys were working on in 8th grade with your service learning project?

Jessica Benitez: Okay, so first of all, in 8th grade, we did the project VER PAR A Prender. That was a project in order to improve a community's visual health.

Jessica Benitez: And we chose a community, Manzanio del Mar, that was a community that's near us, in order to impact them, since they have been working with us in different projects.

Jessica Benitez: So, when we chose that community, we had to answer a question that was, what are we going to do to help them? So, we noticed, and by research and eye exams that we did with an optometrist, we noticed that the kids had

Jessica Benitez: a lot of visual problems, especially one girl that her name was asked me.

Jessica Benitez: And we, as students, didn't know exactly what to do, but we asked ourselves what we could do to help, since we felt a deep desire and commitment to serve.

Jessica Benitez: With that, we concluded by giving a pair of glasses to the students that needed it the most, and we felt like we helped a community just by improving their vision, and it touched our hearts the most.

Jessica Benitez: Yes, it was a really beautiful experience, and we got the opportunity to do it here in our school, and then to go to their campus to experience new things, so they don't… they go out of their comfort zone, but we also go to theirs, so we can, like, get in… get into their shoes, and, like.

Jessica Benitez: Have different visions of our project.

Scott Jamieson: What a cool story, and I think…

Scott Jamieson: Being able to see that impact.

Scott Jamieson: C might be the optimum word here, because these students will be struggling so much with visual challenges, and being able to help them with that, we can really see the impact of our work.

Scott Jamieson: How did you settle on this as a need in their community? When you went to visit them, and went to learn more about their community, how did you decide that this was what we were going to approach in terms of service?

Jessica Benitez: I think this… we decided that because we've been working with them for a long while, since Masanido del Maris, a community Cohoa, has worked with for a lot of years, and we saw that it is a very vulnerable community.

Jessica Benitez: And that we also, in our…

Jessica Benitez: in our part of care in service learning. We were, like, learning all about what… how visual health affects learning, and we saw that these kids really have a problem, and we might have the abilities to fix them.

Jessica Benitez: So, we said, why can't we do something about it? And we started investigating more, investigating more, so… until we decided, yeah, we actually can do something, and we decided to make it.

Jessica Benitez: And also, when we decided that we wanted to impact the little kids, it wasn't just by coincidence, because since they had such

Jessica Benitez: high visual problems, we decided to attack the problem from the roof, because if we gifted glasses to older kids all those years where they had visual problems and affected their ability to read, to write, and to learn, it would, like.

Jessica Benitez: Also, impact them in their future careers, but if we affected the younger kids, that would cut the problem from the root and let them learn very well in their learning career.

Scott Jamieson: I love how you guys took a systems thinking approach to this, and think, how can we have the most impact? And it sounds like you really thought this through.

Scott Jamieson: What other things did you do? Fiorelli, you were talking about investigating, and not just jumping right to action, but really learning more about the problem. What kind of other ways did you guys investigate to learn more?

Jessica Benitez: Well, we… as I said earlier, we brought some kids here, well, the same kids that we gave glasses to, and with the help of an optometrist, we did some tests. We run some tests of, like, with their eyes, how good they were, what type of problem they had.

Jessica Benitez: And then we conclude after one, two… one or two weeks, we concluded what problems they had.

Jessica Benitez: And what did we have to do, like, based on that?

Jessica Benitez: So, based on that, we gave them glasses, like, personalized glasses to them, depending on what their… what their problem was.

Jessica Benitez: And also, besides that, in class, we investigated about how visual health impacted humans, because since these projects are mostly in Spanish and Sociales de Colombia, in Sociales, we got to learn and present to our classmates how visual health impacted everyone, and how it was important for humans to have great visual health.

Jessica Benitez: We learned how to prevent Visual health problems, and we learned how to cure them.

Jessica Benitez: Also, besides that research, we had the visit from an optometrist that came here to our school and explained to us what the most common vision problems were, and

Jessica Benitez: how they were, like, created. And with that knowledge, we basically started to ask ourselves what we could do to impact a community, and then, turned out impacting the first grade kids that were at that time university.

Scott Jamieson: So cool! And I love that you were able to connect with an optometrist, connect with someone in the community who's an expert in this area, to learn more and think about how we can have that impact. And a lot of times in our own international school communities.

Scott Jamieson: We obviously have people with vision problems, but we just get classes, right? We have access to that, and where a school like in Manzania, they don't necessarily have the resources to be able to do that, so it's so cool that you're able to provide that, and it's open the door to learning for some of these students.

Scott Jamieson: Now, obviously, you don't have a whole bunch of glasses just sitting around in your classroom.

Scott Jamieson: How did that all come about? Like, glasses cost money.

Scott Jamieson: How did you guys manage to provide these for the kids?

Jessica Benitez: So, actually, this was a very hard process, because when we consulted the optometrist about how many pair of glasses we had to

Jessica Benitez: buy in order for the kids to, each of them, have their… have their glasses. The cost was up to, like, 5 million Colombian pesos, and as students, it's really hard to obtain that amount of money.

Jessica Benitez: So, we… we thought we could do bake cells, we could,

Jessica Benitez: sort things out, and it was really hard since we were… our grade is with 57 people, but not every one of those 57 students wanted to help the cause and actually do something to obtain money. So…

Jessica Benitez: One big group of girls created the brand of the waffle school, and throughout two days of our school week, we were selling waffles to all high school and middle school in order to obtain money, and we had a whole system.

Jessica Benitez: And with that Waffle Scoop brand, we were able to obtain around 1 million Colombian pesos, and then

Jessica Benitez: The other four, each student had to pay around, I would think it was 50 mil Colombian pesos.

Jessica Benitez: That in order to put an effort into it, and with those 15 meals, and the amount of money we had founded in the waffle scoop, we were able to obtain the money to buy the kids' glasses.

Jessica Benitez: Yeah, and that was a beautiful process, too, because we got the opportunity to go through our challenges that we knew that were gonna happen, and we got a great outcome from that, and we got to experience it in a very wonderful way.

Scott Jamieson: I agree. I think it's really cool to be able to take kind of a social enterprise approach to this, and recognize that

Scott Jamieson: If we want to make a difference for the visual health of these students in our community, then we are going to need to do some work, and raise some funds for this, because it's important. And I love that you guys took kind of that social enterprise approach with the waffles, I think that's so cool.

Scott Jamieson: For those who are not as familiar with your community.

Scott Jamieson: How close by is this school? You guys are in Boca Grande, right? I think? And… no? Are you… where is your… remind me, one of your campuses is, but maybe I'm mixed up.

Jessica Benitez: We're in… the one Boca Grande is preschool.

Scott Jamieson: Right, right, right, sorry.

Jessica Benitez: It's in Anorte. So, like, half an hour from Bogarande.

Scott Jamieson: Okay. And how close are you guys to the mezzanilla school that you're working with?

Jessica Benitez: I think we're around 15 minutes.

Scott Jamieson: So, really close by. And that's what I think is so cool about this project. This isn't someone on the other side of the world or in another place, this is right in your local community.

Scott Jamieson: And I think it's so cool that your school has this partnership. And I know that Grade 2 also works with this school, and there's a lot of different opportunities at different grade levels for this really deep partnership between you and them in the school in Manzania.

Scott Jamieson: So, I think that's a really great example of that reciprocal partnership and that long-term connection that your school community has.

Scott Jamieson: I want to think a little bit about… you guys have talked a little bit about this already, but…

Scott Jamieson: Think about some of the skills that you needed to take on a project like this. This is a big project, and what skills did you need that maybe you learned in school, or maybe you learned in some of your previous service learning projects, that were really important to help this project be successful?

Jessica Benitez: Okay, so I think the most important skill is problem solving, because when we're doing a service learning project, we encounter many issues we didn't thought we would have at the start.

Jessica Benitez: For example, in this one that we did in 8th grade, we had the issue of this girl that had vision problems that were more severe than the others, and the glasses wouldn't cure her vision problems, and we would just waste money. So she needed a deeper eye exam.

Jessica Benitez: She needed a deeper solution that we had to provide in order to help her, just like we did to her classmates.

Jessica Benitez: And also, we have to be, like, possible thinkers. So, positive thinkers, sorry. So, because when we didn't, like, gather enough money, like, the… we got, I think, 500 mil pesos.

Jessica Benitez: Instead of that $5 million we needed, everyone… well, half of the class said, like, we're not gonna do this anymore, this is, like, impossible to do, but, like, the waffle group.

Jessica Benitez: Still, like, said, we can do it, we can do it, and they persisted, and we eventually got the result we wanted.

Scott Jamieson: Yeah, I think that resilience and perseverance is so important, because these challenges are not easy to solve. If they were easy, we wouldn't have them anymore.

Scott Jamieson: Right? I think we need that, be… perseverance. We want to be change makers. We need to…

Scott Jamieson: be able to put in that hard work when things get difficult, and when we hit those setbacks, to be resilient and continue to work, and I'm so inspired by the work you guys did to not give up at that point, but to keep working and have this positive result that you did.

Scott Jamieson: Sorry, I'm not checking my Instagram, I'm just checking my notes over here, I'm kind of taking some notes on the side.

Scott Jamieson: Why is this type of learning important to you as a student at Kahoa?

Jessica Benitez: Well, I think it teaches us more about, like, how to impact other communities, and how they are living compared to ours.

Jessica Benitez: And, how we can actually help them.

Jessica Benitez: So, we here are very privileged, and we have a lot of things, and they don't have, like, the same things we have. So, it teaches us a lot of values.

Jessica Benitez: That we haven't gathered throughout our lives.

Jessica Benitez: And it's a really beautiful experience to work with people that don't get the chance to live our same lives every day.

Jessica Benitez: And I actually want to add on to that, because here in the school, we have something called REACHES. That's, like, the values we go, like, we act with. And in REACHES, we have responsibility, empathy, assertion, cooperation, honesty, excellence, and self-control.

Jessica Benitez: And all of these values come together when we act in a service-learning project, especially empathy, assertion, and cooperation, since in these projects, we mostly have to act with compassion and

Jessica Benitez: understand the other community's point of view. Because if we act as the students we are, and we don't act with the values the school has taught us, we would just… don't… we would just…

Jessica Benitez: Now, impacts the community as deeply as we have in the past.

Jessica Benitez: Especially in this community, we had to act with a lot of compassion, since the girl I already mentioned, Aslan, besides her severe vision problems, she had no arms.

Jessica Benitez: And in our school, there's no one that doesn't have any arms, so we weren't used to the fact of a kid not having arms. We didn't know how to act, how to help her, how to hug her, even, because when a kid does something right, we immediately want to high-five them.

Jessica Benitez: But she couldn't high-five us back.

Jessica Benitez: And at first, that was a very big…

Jessica Benitez: setback, since this wasn't how we used to… how were we used to act. And her story reminded us why we have to serve and pushed us to find every possible way to support her and her classmates. She motivated us, she inspired us in order to find a better solution for all her grade.

Scott Jamieson: Beautifully said, both of you. I think that just inspires me so much. Thinking and listening to you talk about compassion and empathy.

Scott Jamieson: And this desire to have a positive impact, but also talking about the reaches at your school. And not just having this up on a poster, but having this really be the lived experience for everyone in your community through this kind of work.

Scott Jamieson: And I think that's why this work is so important. It allows us to bring our core values, our mission of our school to life.

Scott Jamieson: By engaging in this kind of work. And we're meeting some really interesting people, we're building relationships with some really interesting people in our community that we might not otherwise have a chance to connect with.

Scott Jamieson: And we're able to do something positive, it's making a difference in their learning experience, a huge difference. And I think that's really inspirational. And I'm…

Scott Jamieson: really touched. It does, you kind of… you're just… you feel it in your heart. I think it's such a beautiful experience that you guys had. And it's through that resilience and perseverance, not giving up.

Scott Jamieson: And this opportunity that's created when working within your Spanish and Socialis classes, and I think it's so cool that you have that.

Scott Jamieson: Now, as high school students.

Scott Jamieson: What has your experience in the middle school with service learning, how has that helped prepare you for high school, and what aspirations do you have to continue with service learning as you become high school students this year?

Jessica Benitez: Okay, so I think middle school service learning projects prepared us for high school, since in high school, I think they're more complex.

Jessica Benitez: Because this year, we did Cartagenando Hando. That was a project that required a lot of research, a lot of thinking, and most importantly, a lot of character, since in the stage of impact.

Jessica Benitez: the impact to our… to the Kahoa… to the Cartagena community was to be a tourist guides for a day.

Jessica Benitez: And we had to go out to the streets and stop people to tell them the story of the monument and social hierarchy monument that we had. So, I think in middle school, we wouldn't have this type of project, since it's more for

Jessica Benitez: For younger kids that won't be exposed to this in the streets, but in high school, they do get more complex and do get more difficult.

Jessica Benitez: And also, because, since… Because we've been working with…

Jessica Benitez: since 6th grade, and we were, like, general planning about, like, United Nations sustainability goals, sustainable development goals, and it was very general, just like each group had each one.

Jessica Benitez: In the seventh grade, we did reform a uniform to impact other communities in Cartagena, and then verbara Brender until Cartagena Anduando, which we got to know more about our city and things we didn't know, and

Jessica Benitez: tell them to tourists and even people in our community. It was very… a very good and very wonderful experience, since it was a chan… we got the chance to learn a little bit about our community and the past, and how it has impacted our future.

Scott Jamieson: I remember working with a couple of your teachers as we were talking about this project, and…

Scott Jamieson: just… I didn't know a lot about Cartagena and how it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it was one of your teachers, who I won't name his name, and were talking about

Scott Jamieson: My students don't know anything about our community. We've got to do a project to help them connect to our community. And I think it's so cool that you guys are able to just learn some stories about your community that maybe you didn't know.

Scott Jamieson: through that project, and I love how those projects in the middle school help to build that… those skills to allow you to be successful in these more complex projects that you're going to be doing this year, and next year, and after. And I think that's really inspiring.

Scott Jamieson: I wonder if you could share a moment with me from that project in Grade 8, working with the school in Manzania.

Scott Jamieson: That moment that you're just… that you remember that…

Scott Jamieson: fills you with pride and gratitude, something you're most proud of from that project. Just a moment, or a story, or just a particular

Scott Jamieson: Day on working with that school.

Scott Jamieson: What's something that you're really proud of? What's that moment that really sticks with you in your memory?

Jessica Benitez: So, the moment… the moment I'm most proud of is actually when this little girl… I didn't get the chance to visit them in their campus due to personal problems, but I… I actually was worried because I wanted to see Aslan again, the girl that had severe vision problems and also didn't have arms, since we connected really deeply, and we literally became friends.

Jessica Benitez: so I was worried that she was gonna be sad about my…

Jessica Benitez: my absence, and she actually asked for me and wanted to see me, and throughout my friends that later came back that day to her school, they told me that she was asking for me, that she wanted to see me, and that showed me the deep connection we had created. And after about a month, because they visited them, they visited the

Jessica Benitez: They visited them later in the… in the school year, and after a month, the connection was still there. And up to this day, I'm still planning on to going to see her in her campus to show her that I still care about her, and to show her that I haven't forgotten her.

Jessica Benitez: Yeah, and I got the chance to go to their school, and I didn't… I got to prove the thing that Miranda just said. Everyone was asking for her, especially Aslyn, but thankfully, Aslyn, when she came… she came here, she made a lot of friends.

Jessica Benitez: from our class.

Jessica Benitez: So, she was really happy, and a little bit sad, because she didn't get to see Miranda, but we were all happy because she had a great time, also with her classmates and her teachers.

Scott Jamieson: I think it's the relationships that get built in projects like this that are the most impactful on both sides. Like, just listening to you talk about the connections you made, and hearing about how the

Scott Jamieson: other students value those connections as well. And I think it doesn't matter that we go to different schools, or we're from different neighborhoods, or we're from different socioeconomic backgrounds.

Scott Jamieson: where you can still make those really meaningful connections. And I think that's what's so beautiful about this kind of learning, so thank you both for sharing that.

Scott Jamieson: Is there anything else you'd like to share about your project that I haven't asked the right question for you to share?

Jessica Benitez: No, I think we said it all. It's, like, I wanted to say that it's a beautiful way to learn more about community and how we can impact other people.

Jessica Benitez: Not just, like, physical impact, but really on their hearts.

Jessica Benitez: And it can stay for a very long time, and make wonderful relationships throughout the way.

Jessica Benitez: And I also want to add that this project shaped the way I personally saw other communities, because when we grow up in an environment where everyone is able to provide themselves what they need, we don't really observe the fact that there's a lot of visual problems

Jessica Benitez: In our… in our environments. Especially since we… after we did this project, we realized that out of the 57 people in our grade, about 40 of them have glasses.

Jessica Benitez: And then, comparing this to Manzanillo del Mar, we thought how bad these kids were learning due to the fact that they didn't see well. And we understood the importance of our

Jessica Benitez: Our social income, our economic income, since

Jessica Benitez: Sometimes we don't value it enough to… but when we compare it to other communities, we actually get to see how different our lives are from them just because of money.

Scott Jamieson: Yeah, we have those differences, but at the same time, we're all just…

Scott Jamieson: we're kids, and you can go overcome those differences and make the… build those relationships. I think that's such a cool experience with this project. One last question for you before we wrap up.

Scott Jamieson: What is one thing that you would like to tell this year's grade 8 students who are going to be involved in this project in the next semester? What's one thing you'd like to tell them about this project?

Jessica Benitez: I personally would like to tell them to be prepared, because they could generate a very big impact on a community.

Jessica Benitez: And if they don't end up doing the project, maybe they change it up, I really don't know. If they don't, they actually should be worried about visual health and their impact on learning, since it's something before this project, we didn't know pretty much about.

Jessica Benitez: And after this project, we were concerned about this, and even though they may not understand the project as good as we did, since we were the ones that actually created the impact, they still

Jessica Benitez: I would recommend them to still look forward and try to

Jessica Benitez: Be assertive in the fact that they understand how hard this project was in order to impact another community.

Jessica Benitez: Yeah, to add on to that, I think whichever project they decide to make this year, they have to be really positive and persistent. Don't let the problems in the way get into their brains, and they all go so mad and sad that they can't do some things.

Jessica Benitez: So be really persistent, so never, like, put your head down, always up, because you always can… you can always find an outcome to the problem.

Scott Jamieson: Great advice. Hopefully some of those great aides might listen to our podcast and hear that from you guys.

Scott Jamieson: Miranda and Fiorella, thank you so much. I am really grateful to have the time to meet both of you, and…

Scott Jamieson: hear your story, and I feel really inspired, and just the empathy and compassion that you both show for people in your local community, I think that the world needs more of that. And I think you guys are such…

Scott Jamieson: excellent ambassadors of your school, and really showcasing what this kind of learning can look like, and hopefully will inspire some other schools to think about a project like this in their community. So, thank you so much for being guests on the Empathy to Impact podcast. It's been a pleasure to talk to both of you.

Jessica Benitez: Thank you, Scott. I hope it impacts other communities and other schools, too, because I think it's a experience everyone should have the chance to get.

Jessica Benitez: And thank you for your time. We really hope that this message gets through around the world, or really just around some communities, because we're really worried that social work is not something that's been done in many places in the world.

Scott Jamieson: No, I think there's definitely a lot of opportunities, and the world needs students just like you to make a difference and push toward that future we want to live in.

Scott Jamieson: So thank you very much, and have a wonderful day. We'll talk to you soon.

Jessica Benitez: Me too, though. Bye. Thank you.

Scott Jamieson: And… let's stop the recording.