Reflection about the experience

With these projects we wanted to facilitate teachers and student not only the experience of working in real world projects but to facilitate them a volunteer international experience as a way to develop competences linked to Education for Sustainable Development. These real world projects and living leave students with a deeper impression than learning merely in their classrooms.

As explained before, to collect the lived experience, students were asked to write a diary with an acronym if they wanted. These diaries were qualitatively analyzed because of its richness (Berg, 2004). Some coding and interpretative analysis technique was used to do it.

From this analysis we have found that the experience has led to goals related to the academic / professional education and to values education such as:

 Critical thinking: Critical contextualization of knowledge by establishing relationships with global social, economic and environmental problems, local, and / or global.

 Responsibility: sustainable use of resources and the prevention of negative impacts on the natural and social environment.

 Relationships and decision making: participation in community processes that promote sustainability.  Awareness of ethical values: application of ethical principles related to the values of sustainability in

 Global mindset: Willingness to promote diversity, openness and respect for other cultures, working effectively with people of different cultures, styles and skills, making optimal use of their views and ideas for meeting goals.

Some of these findings can be found in J. Peris et al. (2015) or in Fernández-Sánchez et al. (2015).

The learning process that takes place in this kind of programs encourages inquiry, create, experiment, adjust and self-assess the process lived. It generates an approach to their professional future problems as well as the ability to relate the contents and applications and resolving issues that arise in an area which, as mentioned throughout this paper, presents additional difficulties result from the living conditions of the village where it was developed. The final result is that the contents of the subjects are no longer isolated elements but they have a direct correlation with reality. Moreover, as the team is interdisciplinary, you can establish the relationship of learning objectives with other areas of knowledge.

I think that really all the students need the chance to take part in some volunteer work. There are so much differences between what I learnt in the classroom and what I have seen here! We made designs in Spain and now, in real-life I have to consider the conditions of the village and make adjustments of our work. We had made a perfect planning! And… we have had to re-adjust everything. So, what I have learnt is…. So much! Not only I had to relate all the subjects but I had to lead with people. Std4 On the other hand, this distance between what it is learnt in the classroom and what they found in the field became a trouble sometimes.

I think there is some things that should be improved…For instance, to inform better about the projects we were going to develop here […] if someone has explain me better what I would have had here I would have invest more time in other parts of the project. Std1 For instance they saw the relationship between the distribution of drinking water and creating some kind of sanitation to avoid diseases. This involved civil engineers and health students as some diseases occur as a result of the consumption of untreated water or contaminated by fecal due to the lack treatment of wastewater.

I learn a lot being with heath students. They know so many things I don’t! Std9 Another purpose of this project is to improve the living conditions of the village. In this way the student is an active subject, committed to the development of social commitment and empathy, and the ability to guide reflective processes.

I wanted to understand the feeling of the villagers. […] I encountered so many things that were out of my expectations! I didn’t

want to leave Std1

A problem that was detected is the complexity of living together in such a different environment than usual one. They had to live without light, water scarcity and away from the family circle and friends, unable to use the Whats App or the internet.

I am missing my friends. I miss my family. I wish I could send them a what’s app. Std3

5 Conclusions

We consider that this project has great potential as a learning process of the student, given the actual context in which it is developed, adapted to the needs of a community and their life conditions to preserve the sustainable development of the community.

There is a clear contribution of each of the participants in this project in development principles proposed by the Cerro Verde Foundation through a cooperative, responsible and ethical work, with a participation that involves intense personal experiences in a hostile environment in relation to the habitual way of life and work of students and teachers.

The development of this type of initiative proposes a framework for exceptional work, where it joins the work on real projects by students who develop skills to implement the knowledge acquired in the classroom in a different environment, with difficult access resources and poor working conditions.

The multidisciplinary nature of the project generates an overview of the actions that each student performs in their area of expertise, fostering a global contextualization of the work performed and the idea of convergence of each performance as well as the transfer of knowledge.

In the diary written by the students, it is revealed the extent to which the competences are developed and their degree of satisfaction with the learning process.

For the Cerro Verde Foundation (FCV) the participation of the University in this project mean to open a field of action a very specific volunteering. It gives a support that facilitates data collection and a detailed analysis of the previous situation of the village and the changes they have been operating.

Local organizations have received with admiration and gratitude that students and teachers from a Spanish university move to their village to live with its citizens and to participate in projects that FCV is developing. These academic activities related to development cooperation involve a major advance in current approaches to Education for Development and Sustainability within the European Higher Education Area.

These initiatives require institutional support for their development and implementation in all areas of knowledge and, thus, to involve more students.

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