Children at the Eyup Orphanage in Istanbul, Turkey say many goodbyes-to their families, who cannot afford to support them, and to their friends, who never seem to stay at the shelter for long. Even so, the seasoned youngsters had a hard time seeing a team of DukeEngage participants go at the end of their six-week stay.
"Because of the nature of their lifestyle, I almost assumed they wouldn't mind saying goodbye to us," said junior Chrissy Booth, who participated in the program. "But they really didn't want to see us go. They made it very clear to us that it had been important to them that we were there."
Summer has come and gone, but Eric Mlyn, director of DukeEngage and director of the Duke Center for Civic Engagement, said he hopes students will not say so long to the causes they championed.
"Follow-up to DukeEngage is as important as preparation and is as important as the actual experience," he said. "But it's not always possible for students to remain directly involved with the communities that they worked with, particularly for those students that went abroad."
DukeEngage directors have coordinated a variety of programming-including a house course and a handful of informal get-togethers-to help participants preserve ties with their far-flung service destinations, Mlyn said.
Robert Korstad, associate professor of public policy studies and history and a program leader for the DukeEngage site in South Africa, teaches The Politics of Civic Engagement, a course geared toward students who have recently concluded long-term service projects such as DukeEngage. Coursework will require students to explore the political and ethical issues raised by their civic engagement, but Korstad noted that the class will also provide support to students who are having difficulty returning to their lives as Dukies after an influential experience abroad.
"A lot of students find that the most difficult part of their service engagement projects is when they return to Duke and have to fit back into the culture, organizations and group of friends that they had before," he said. "You go away and have an experience that's very powerful and transformative, and then you come back to school and everyone sees you as the person you were in the Spring. But you aren't that person anymore."
Although adjusting to the nuances of life in Turkey took time, Booth said many aspects of the American culture seemed foreign to her upon return to the U.S.-the amount of skin shown by her fellow students, the hostility of strangers and the secular climate of the cities-and she experienced culture shock yet again.
Junior Ellie Hwang, who helped construct a water system for a Peruvian village, said DukeEngage showed her both the excesses of American life and the need for service at home.
"Before, I took for granted so many of the things we have in the U.S.," she said. "DukeEngage opened my eyes to all the work that needs to be done in the rest of the world-not just in Peru, but in places like the U.S., too."
Junior Jonathan Cross, who taught English to Somalian refugees as part of DukeEngage in Cairo, said staying in touch with his pupils will be nearly impossible because they do not have computers in their homes. But Cross identified a project he had undertaken for the local library as something he will continue to be involved in at home.
Korstad said DukeEngage participants will discover that most problems targeted at the sites abroad have their match in Durham, and he added that a number of students have kept in contact with the organizations they served abroad.
Sophomore Rachel Revelle, who wrestled with immigration issues as part of DukeEngage in Dublin, said the real value of the program was that it taught her how to best go about helping others-lessons that are applicable on any soil.
"I definitely don't want DukeEngage to be one of those situations where you have the experience and then drop it," she said. "We learned to be engaged in service in our everyday lifestyle."
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