South Africa toes a delicate line between being a first world or a third world country. It’s easy to fall in love with the white sand beaches of Cape Town, but not too far away lie people living in squalor, living in homes made from aluminum or cardboard. This is a far cry from the fine dining and luxury hotels that face the sea. Imagine being able to look down the street one way and see pristine mansions and look the other way and see impoverished, overcrowded shacks. Welcome to South Africa. But do not worry. This blog is not about gloom and doom, rather, our goal is to tell the true story of an incredible, life-changing partnership.

As the students of West Chester University’s Honors College touched down in South Africa, they entered a new world so unlike their own. The journey to get there was a long one, but the journey had just begun. There are mixed feelings of nervousness, curiosity, and excitement. One West Chester student felt like he and his fellow Americans were treated with unearned importance by the joyful South African children’s choir. He said, “They made a big deal out of how they were from a disadvantaged position which made me feel very uncomfortable because I was standing outside of the airport as a 'rich' American watching 'poor' South Africans perform for us.” Another student noticed a man trying to sell flowers at a stop light. Trash and broken bottles littered the sidewalk. People with little to no possessions crowded the streets. Talk about a culture shock.

Perhaps just hours before landing the students were worrying about their amounts of travel money or how much longer the flight would be, but all of that paled in comparison to the whole new world before their eyes.

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The partnership between WCU Honors and the people of South Africa began in 1997 when Dr. Kevin Dean, the director of the Honors College, participated in a program organized by the Kellogg National Fellowship Program (KNFP).

Throughout the program, which emphasized leadership training and global development, Dean conducted interviews with various South African university presidents. His interview with the president of Huguenot College in Wellington, South Africa, led to a connection with Deon Kitching, a professor of Youth Ministry and Culture. Out of this connection--and Kitching’s commitment to education--grew the foundation for an international service-learning (ISL) program.

Four years later, 27 students from Pennsylvania’s fourteen Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) Universities participated in the first ISL program in South Africa. The students conducted oral histories of current South African college students, men, and women once on the forefront of change from Apartheid to Democracy. Building upon classroom learning, students also spent time with individuals affected by HIV/AIDS, toured Robben Island, visited sites of natural beauty, and assisted with the delivery of soup to elementary schools. Upon returning home to Pennsylvania, students reflected on their experience and identified an action they could take to serve their own communities.

Students and faculty alike returned to their daily lives, yet they felt a responsibility to share the experience with other students. As Dean writes in Journey to South Africa: “what could we do to allow a wider campus audience to hear the stories and learn the lessons of leadership that we had been privileged to experience firsthand?”

The following fall, the Honors College developed a new course titled Personal Leadership Development: Lessons from South Africa. Its popularity in fall 2001 led to a second run in fall 2002; it is now offered every fall. Students also began fundraising to support future programs in South Africa. Over the past twenty years, the program has developed into a continuous effort to partake in international relationship building and to benefit the people and communities of South Africa.