RATIONALE FOR COMMUNITY EXTENSION & OUTREACH SERVICES: SITUATING THE CENTER

Doing community outreach and extension services has several significant benefits. Engaging in community service provides both faculty members, staff and students with the opportunity to become active members of their community and has a lasting, positive impact on society. Community service or volunteerism enables students to acquire life skills and knowledge and provide relevant services to those who need them most. Some benefits of participating in community service programs include: (a) Psychological benefits. Volunteering increases overall life satisfaction and helps one feel good about themselves because they know that they are helping others. It can also help decrease stress and ease depression because of the joy one feels knowing that one can help other needy individuals; (2) Social benefits. Volunteering engages faculty members, staff and students with the community, creates special bonds with the underserved population, and increases social awareness and responsibility; (3) Cognitive benefits. Volunteering helps faculty members, staff and students enhance their knowledge, grow from new experiences, and develop better interpersonal communication skills; (4) Spiritual gifts. The desire to help the needy and the poor creates a special kind of mission or task to extend oneself beyond the confines of one’s comfort zones. This is the very spirit of the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary; and, (5) Values formation benefits. An individual immersed in the service of humanity, the world, and the environment makes them receptive, responsible, respectful, caring, and sensitive to the needs of others and the environment that he lives in. 

Following the same mission ad gentes exemplified by Theophile Verbist and his companions, the idea of universal brotherhood as part of missionary life witnessing is integrated among the people. It follows the concept of internationalism (CICM, 1974 Chapter), as earlier emphasized in the Chapter of 1967. The missionary dimension of internalization is the participation in the universal mission of the Church, and the Local Churches are also missionaries in the whole meaning of the word, ad gentes (CICM 1967 Chapter). Thus, the CICM Constitutions incorporate the results of a long journey when they affirm that the mission itself creates brotherhood among peoples regardless of cultural backgrounds and diversities. Accordingly, well-integrated international communities are the best expression of brotherhood (CICM CC, 2007). To live happily in multicultural communities at the service of the mission, CICM members must have a solid spirituality and sufficient self-knowledge. Multicultural character is a gift from God that enables us to do our mission today better and has become an integral part of the CICM identity (Revitalizing Our Identity, P. 17). Thus, Article 1 of the CICM Constitutions presents the CICM identity card that allows us to situate the Congregation in which we belong, in the wider Church and the communities we serve; and 

Participating in community service makes a difference to the organization and people being served and makes a difference to every student’s prospects. Participating in community service activities enhances teachers and staff’s work-related skills, builds good references for employers or people regarding community involvement, and provides a forum to network with potential employers. 

It also helps students in the development of civic and social responsibility skills and become more aware of their community’s needs. Service-learning teaching methods connect meaningful community service to academic curricula in terms of academic curricula. Service-learning blends community service goals and formal and informal (standard/academic and experiential/non-standard) educational goals in a manner that benefits participants and recipients. Service-learning is a set of techniques and tools that can strengthen community relationships and connections.

As a method of educational and informational delivery, the service-learning model emphasizes that clients and students learn and develop through active participation in thoughtfully organized experiences that meet actual community needs and are coordinated in an on-going collaboration with the school or institution and the community. Schools using the service-learning model (as contrasted to volunteerism or community service) integrate the service experiences into the student’s academic curriculum. It also provides structured time for students to reflect and analyze the experiences and the connection of the experience to themes or theory or data, in short, to think, talk, or write about what the student did and saw during the actual service activity and how the experience connects to more significant issues or projects. 

It has been proven that service-learning programs at colleges and universities strengthen relationships between higher education institutions and the communities served. When students and community members are involved as recipients and/or participants in traditional research-based courses, formal or informal, relevant information can be gleaned and learned in the process. When projects and course information result from in-service experiences, the recipients are forced to use the information to make changes, “make a difference,” and do something with what they have learned. The community, thus, becomes the laboratory of students in articulating what they know within the four corners of the classroom and specializations that they acquire.

Moreover, the Philippine Catholic Schools Standards (PCSS) defines an excellent Catholic School as (a) committed to the integral human formation which fosters education for justice and peace, care for creation, engaged citizenship, gender sensitivity, and responsible use of all forms of media, among others (PCSS Document#6); (b) engaged in the services of the Church and society with a preferential option for the poor, and (c) promoting a dialogue of faith and life and culture by programs that engage people of different faiths and cultures in a dialogue where the School is mindful of these unique worldviews yet can interpret and give order to human culture in the light of their faith (PCSS Document#6). 

Consequently, the Lingkod Maria Community Development and Advocacy Center in its extension activities is mindful of the Pillars of Transformative Education as espoused by the PCSS by integrating the following in their extension and outreach activities; (1) Justice and Peace – works for the promotion of social justice that brings forth and sustains peace; (2) Ecological Integrity – seeks to form teachers, students and beneficiaries who are respectful of the environment as a Common Home; (3) Engaged citizenship – organizes active engagements in efforts that respond to the concrete problems and challenges facing the country, community and the world; (4) Poverty Alleviation – fosters the creation of wealth and its equitable distribution, thereby promoting the good and dignity of all; (5) Gender Equality – works against gender discrimination and gender-based violence toward gender equality, respect for and integration of LGBT into society as demanded by gender justice; and (6) Youth Empowerment – enables the youth to act and lead for the Common Good with compassion, freedom and responsibility.