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International Service Learning: Your T-Shirt Travels Around the World

Intercultural experience, discussing development policy and experimenting with solutions to global challenges in a team – that’s what International Service Learning (ISL), a two-semester learning program offered by the Professional Center, is all about. Sarah Wirtherle, project manager at ISL, believes in the merit of the initiative and is delighted by the students’ strong commitment: “With the innovative teaching–learning format International Service Learning, the University of Cologne creates a space for development – for our dedicated students and our international partner organizations.” The following report introduces one of the many great projects realized in the framework of ISL. 

By Maren Oehlers, Johanna Saxe and Amelie Starke

We are three students at the University of Cologne, but with completely different majors: social sciences, educational sciences and regional studies Latin America. But we share a mutual interest in global issues and social conditions, including how these things can be conveyed in the classroom – to children, adolescents and adults. That is what brought us together in the framework of International Service Learning in the winter semester 2014/15. Our objective was (and is) to create greater awareness for the issues ‘fair clothing’ and ‘conscious consumption’. Hence the project ‘Your t-shirt travels around the world’ was born. 

Our project began in January and February 2015 with different workshops in the school Marienschule Opladen. In March, we flew to Nicaragua for four weeks to creatively develop the issue with adolescents in Granada and its vicinity.

Specifically, we embarked on a mental journey with the young people from both countries regarding the history of the t-shirt. From cotton cultivation and production to the recycling of clothing, we traced the different phases in the life of the garment.

Together, we critically reflected each individual production step and became familiar with conscious consumption, particularly in our society. With a good dose of creativity and ideas, we revamped used clothing (especially t-shirts) with the adolescents.

Besides creating awareness for social issues and fostering creativity, we also wanted to foster friendship among the young people from both countries. With the revamping of the t-shirts, letter correspondence and other creative actions, we were able to build bridges between the two groups.

… we would definitely like to continue our work. It was great to see how our project developed from its beginnings over the course of the year. At the beginning there was only the idea and the contact with our cooperation partners. Today we look back on an exciting, enriching time in Germany and Nicaragua and many new experiences. We want to continue to inform people on the issues ‘fair clothing’ and ‘conscious consumption’, and to create awareness in different ways. In this context we can now draw on the educational concepts and different structures we developed. Besides information material and workshops, there is also the option to revamp and upgrade clothing in creative workshops.