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WHAT SETS US APART

Revolutionizing Short-Term Study Abroad

Short-term programming is the now the most popular kind of study abroad, yet it is typically organized as educational tourism. All too often, short term programs perpetuate a top-down (or outside-in) development model, and while well-intentioned, they can hinder community empowerment.  Such programs carry out a colonizing model in study abroad.

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Pachaysana approaches short-term programs as we do our semester-long program, with the goal of re-imagining what study abroad can be. We ask our college partners to treat their short time in Ecuador as a privilege and responsibility, recognizing that people in our partner communities do not have the same travel opportunities.

 

Thus, as with the Rehearsing Change program, almost everything about our short-term programming is different: 

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  • We co-design and co-administer short-term programs with local community educators and knowledge-holders. Our community partners are not treater as service providers. They are key actors and leaders in the entire educational and organizational process.

  • We build critical intercultural consciousness among all participants by focusing on unlearning the systemic and embodied injustices that characterize most intercultural education programming.

  • We take great strides to assure that all programs are integrally linked to our organizational mission and carry out a practical application of sustainable community development (as defined by the host communites). In other words, community development empowers study abroad, and study abroad empowers community development. 

  • Decolonial Education: There is no top-down or outside-in methodology, we respect multiple ways of learning and knowing. All participants are treated as equals and all work is co-created between international students and local counterparts. We welcome and celebrate diverse knowledge in our spaces. 

  • Fair Trade Study Abroad: Communities are provided ample opportunity for growth through these programs, as well as agency and power in deciding what this growth looks like. Long-time community partners are often the leaders and principal facilitators of our short-term groups.  

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