In just five days we set off for Cochabamba, Bolivia and I couldn’t be more excited! We have been communicating closely with our clients: Amizade and CEOLI and are currently formulating plans for what we can accomplish in-country. One of the main reasons I am excited to travel to Bolivia, other than just exploring somewhere I have never been before, is too see the children and adults at CEOLI that we have been working so hard for. Despite this excitement, I do anticipate a variety of challenges dealing with language, general communication, and food to name a few. However, I am still sure I will gain valuable knowledge and experience through this international service-learning experience in Cochabamba, Bolivia!

One of the most important aspects of traveling to a new country in general is being able to communicate with the local people. The striking issue surrounding the aspect of communication in Bolivia is the fact that Spanish is the national language, I don’t speak Spanish, and have not been enrolled in a Spanish class since I was in the sixth grade. Fortunately, one of our main resources in Bolivia, Jean Carla, is a very skilled English and Spanish speaker and will be able to aid us when we try to talk to Spanish speakers in Bolivia. Despite, the resources we have available to us, there will still be many situations in which there is no one who is able to help us communicate. I believe this will occur especially when we are working with the children. In those situations, which will occur almost every day at CEOLI, I will have to rely on physical actions to both communicate and show understanding. When speaking to people who know some English, but not a lot, I will have to repeat myself multiple times as well as ask them to repeat themselves to ensure we both understand.

The scope of our communication does not end with casual conversations. We will also be continuing our consulting project while in Cochabamba. I will have to familiarize myself with the correct titles to use when having a formal conversation such as Señor and Señora. While this may not be as important in the United States, I would not want to offend anyone, especially our clients, by not arriving prepared to have formal conversations. Bolivia is also a much higher context country than the United States. This essentially means that in order to be a good communicator in Bolivia I must have, and be able to understand, sophisticated, nuanced, and layered communication with anyone I am talking to. For example, when communicating in the United States, we are very clear and straight forward. We often repeat ourselves many times to ensure our message is received and understood by the person that we are talking to. However, in Bolivia, messages are often implied and may not be communicated clearly. Obviously, coming from the United States, I am not accustomed to this type of communication style, so there could be problems with misunderstood and miscommunicated information. To combat this, as mentioned previously, I will try to ask for repetition and clarification, but in situations where this may not be appropriate, I can always talk to my fellow students and the other resources we have available to clear anything up after the fact. First and foremost, I would like to avoid leaving conversations where I don’t understand everything, so I will be working on my active listening. In order to do this, I will pay close attention during every conversation, maintain eye contact, and most importantly clarify and ask for clarification.

In order to have good conversations, both parties to need to trust each other. Like context, trust is dealt with differently in Bolivia than in the United States. Trust is very task-based in the United States. This means that trust is built up quickly through business activities, such as meetings or projects, and then can be dropped as easily as it was built. On the contrary, in Bolivia, trust is much more relationship based. This is very important for me when I am talking to clients because I have to ensure that a strong relationship is built up before diving straight into specifics about CEOLI, card sales, the juice stand, and anything about our consulting project in general. While we do have a time crunch, being that we will only be in Bolivia for about a week, it may be somewhat challenging to build up very strong relationships before discussing work and business. Despite this, my group will try our hardest to build up these relationships with our clients through meals and casual conversations in the time we are allotted before jumping into the consulting project side of things. Fortunately, the University of Pittsburgh has sent multiple groups to Cochabamba to work with CEOLI previously and because of this, some of that trust is already formed. It is also our job to continue these strong relations and trust for the groups in the future.

For some more general cultural norms, I anticipate that both accommodations and food may cause some challenges for myself and the group. While the houses in South Oakland are far from glamorous, the change to living in a hostel type setting is very important.  Thankfully, I have been able to communicate with students who have gone on the Global Service Learning trip to Cochabamba previously and I’m very aware of what our living situations will be like. I have also gained valuable knowledge about the food in Cochabamba. From what I’ve seen on our tentative itinerary, we will be sharing many meals with individuals that we are working closely with. Based on what I’ve heard from previous groups, many Pitt students get slightly sick at some point on the trip. I am going to avoid drinking the tap water and avoid eating any food which would have been washed in water because getting sick during a meal with a client would most definitely not be good for business.

Through this Global Service Learning trip, I hope to grow immensely both personally and academically. A study done by Vogelgesang and Astin at the University of California, Los Angeles, concluded that students who participate in service-learning have self-reported gains in critical thinking, writing skills, and higher GPAs. While these are all amazing benefits, none of these are attainable by just going on a service-learning trip.  I really have to be an active participant in Cochabamba, and during class in general, to see these benefits. Providing service for others give us an opportunity to explore out own empathetic capabilities and when we can understand how pressing the issues we are trying to help with are, we can motivate ourselves to work harder. My critical thinking and leadership skills will hopefully improve during this consulting project and trip to Cochabamba because I am no longer thinking about the best outcomes for myself, but rather how much of my own effort I can devote towards helping CEOLI.

I also hope to strengthen my current, as well as obtain new transferrable skills. Transferrable skills are especially helpful in the workplace because, well, they are transferrable. These are skills I can acquire and sharpen now, as a Sophomore in college, that will still be useful for me years down the line as a member of the workforce or in almost any endeavor I pursue. One of these skills which I believe I already possess due to the fact that I interned in Tel Aviv, Israel this past summer and worked in a foreign workplace, is communication. However, it can still be improved. I have never done a consulting project before and the communication when working with a client is a lot different than when working with coworkers or peers. Because we are working for the client, we have to make sure we are constantly communicating and on the same page. For example, if we decided to plan for a mobile juice truck instead of a juice stand without communicating with CEOLI first, not only would Jean Carla be upset because we didn’t check in to see if this was the direction she wanted to take, but we would be months behind in our planning if we had to change our idea.

Another transferrable skill I want to improve upon is my flexibility and adaptability. These skills are not going to be acquired through most classes here at Pitt which is why I am so excited to work on them through this Global Service Learning class. We have already had to be very flexible and are currently working on reaching out to sales channels which we had not previously anticipated. What I’ve learned so far is that it’s one thing to make a plan, but it’s a huge challenge to be able to follow through on said plan. It seemed easy at first to just say we were going to reach out to certain stores around the University of Pittsburgh, but when those plans fell through, we had to scamper and come up with a backup plan. Through this experience, I have really learned the importance of having multiple options because if I want to be more flexible and adaptable, I should have some idea of what route to take next as to not stall the project I am working. Like all of these transferrable skills, flexibility and adaptability is best learned through experience. It may sound strange, but I am looking forward to any kinks in the road we may have because I want to continue to challenge myself to push past those obstacles and change directions when needed as this will be a very important skill for me to have in the future. In order to reap the benefits of service-learning, I need to reflect on my experiences while they happen. I plan on reflecting often while in Cochabamba and would like to write down how my experiences in-country are shaping my skills.

Writing about the possible benefits of this service-learning trip has made me even more excited to go to Bolivia than before, if that’s even possible. I know I will value the preparation and reflecting I have done before traveling to Cochabamba and I can’t wait for what should hopefully be one of the best weeks of my life!