AROUND THE WORLD
Senior Jenna Severson, far left, at the Yabonga youth center in Cape Town, South Africa, with friends (from left) Aphiwe Kewuti, Mihlali Mbana, Eric Bafo, and Sindiswa Koyo. SERVICE LEARNING
Reaching across cultures W
hen Jenna Severson walked down the streets of Khayelitsha, a township in Cape
Town, South Africa, it was clear she wasn’t one of the locals. The commu- nity is exclusively black and largely impoverished, the result of years of apartheid that pushed people of color to the outskirts of the city. Residents immediately took notice of Severson, a white, American woman, and would yell things at her in isiX- hosa, the predominant language in the area, as she walked by. Severson’s
desire to engage with the commu- nity lead her to learn some isiXhosa, so she would yell back. “It was fun to throw off that expectation of who people thought I was,” she says. Severson, a senior double major-
ing in women’s and gender studies and English, traveled to Cape Town as part of the South Africa Service Learning Program in collaboration with Marquette University. She worked at Yabonga, an NGO that helps children and families af- fected by HIV/AIDS, where her duties involved everything from facilitating youth programs and workshops to
visiting homes to gauge people’s concerns or help them fill out pa- perwork. In the process, she says she learned to adjust her expectations of what it means to serve. “If you want to do service, you
can’t go in expecting to make a dif- ference. You have to go in expecting to learn,” Severson says. She took that idea and ran with it, learning the names of everyone she worked with and making an effort to learn new words in isiXhosa daily. Through a partnership with the
University of the Western Cape, Loyola students have an opportunity
24 LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO
Service overseas gives students a broad view of the world around them • BY ELIZABETH CZAPSKI (’17)
to be immersed in South African culture. It is one of many destinations abroad—including Rome, Ho Chi Minh City, and Manila—where Loyola students can live the Jesuit mission through service. The South Africa Service Learning
Program requires courses on apart- heid and local community develop- ment. Through those classes and conversations with fellow students, Severson was able to reflect more deeply on her own experience. “We had intentional discussions all the time about race, about religion, about health care, about the economic
SOUTH AFRICA PHOTO COURTESY OF THE YABONGA YOUTH CENTER
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