Los Niños Service Trip
June 4-12, 2008

Click here to download information
and application for 2008 trip

For a number of years John Carroll students have travelled to Tijuana, Mexico to work with the Los Niños Community Development Program. Working side-by-side with members of local communities, JCU students learn much about the vibrant communities of the U.S.-Mexican border.

Tijuana comes as a surprise. It's a dynamic, thriving city, which has grown 20-fold in the last half century. It's scarred by the border wall, which we visit at many points, but it's inextricably bound to the U.S. economy, and is shaped by a hybrid culture, part Mexican, part Californian, part border.

Sponsored by the Honors Program in 2006 and 2007, the trip has been generously supported by a number of other offices on campus, including the Progam in Applied Ethics, the Center for Global Education, the Academic Vice-President's Office, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Office of Multicultural Affairs, the Division of Student Affairs, the Jesuit Community, and the Departments of History, Philosophy, Communication and Theatre Arts.

If you would like more information about the trip, please contact Bob Kolesar in the Honors Program. Applications for the 2008 trip are now being accepted. They can be downloaded as a Word file or Acrobat file. The direct costs for each participant (transportation, food, lodging, and materials) total about $1200. We expect to be able to subsdize about half of that for each student participant, leaving each responsible for contributing $600 toward the cost of the trip. The initial deadline for application is October 8, 2007, with a $100 deposit needed by October 15 to secure a space.

We spend about a week to ten days living together in Los Alamos, a residential area of Tijuana a mile or two from the border. Most mornings, we go to work sites where we work with Mexican communities building improvements for their schools or other needs. A portion of the fees we pay is used to purchase materials for these improvement projects. Similarly, the communities with which we work raise money for the materials and contribute their labor as well. In the afternoons and evenings we engage in a number of activities to gain a better understanding of the dynamics of border culture and society.

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We go not so much to help others, because we could much more easily send money if that was our primary interest, but rather to learn with others and from others. We find our inspiration not in charity, but in the invitation of Lilla Watson:

"If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time... 
But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine,  then let us work together."

Photos from the May 2006 trip, taken by Bob Kolesar and Jonathan Tramontana.