Through looking at everyday encounters between hosts and volunteers, we are able to see not only the struggles and difficulties...but also the possibilities for both teaching and learning. In this dissertation, I examine encounters in volunteer abroad programs in Nicaragua from a transnational feminist perspective. Focusing on these programs as pedagogical projects, I examine the distinctly different pedagogical logics that inform Nicaraguan hosts, North American volunteers, and volunteer-sending organizations, respectively. Drawing on my in-depth interviews of Nicaraguan and North American participants as well as analysis of institutional structures and discourses of volunteering abroad, I look at the differing motivations and experiences that hosts (those who work with the volunteers) and volunteers bring to these encounters. Distinctly different social, material, and historical contexts structure how hosts and volunteers encounter each other in volunteer abroad programs. The hosts are shaped by the historical context of the Nicaraguan Revolution and the country’s historical commitments to solidarity the revolution produced. Hosts envision volunteering abroad as a pedagogical project with the potential for the political transformation of the volunteers. Volunteers, on the other hand, bring a neo-liberal and individualized perspective to volunteering abroad, which means they are primarily interested in a transformation of the self and the accumulation of resume-enhancing social capital.

​

This study conceptualized global service learning as a series of pedagogical encounters. This conceptualization is informed by transnational feminism and critical pedagogy to attend to relationality and learning. I argue that encounters reveal the ways in which dominant narratives are upturned. I argue that hosts must be centred in our research, and practice in volunteer abroad programs. Through looking at everyday encounters between hosts and volunteers, we are able to see not only the struggles and difficulties of volunteering abroad but also the possibilities for both teaching and learning.