The Ateneo Office for Social Concern and Involvement (OSCI) administers and manages all the university’s social formation programs. These are more commonly known by students as the Introduction to Ateneo Culture and Traditions (Intact), National Service Training Program-Preparatory Leadership Undertaking for Sophomores (NSTP-Plus), Junior Engagement Program (JEEP) and Praxis program.

From the goals of the programs mentioned on the OSCI website, the first two years are more geared towards service, while the latter attempt to bridge the gap between students and the communities through immersion and exposure.

As the office continually establishes contact with communities distinct from the Ateneo, it also has to walk the line between economic, social, and cultural differences. The question is if the organization and execution of these programs allow for OSCI and, consequently, the Ateneo community, to reach these goals.

Operating mechanisms

According to Leland Dela Cruz, PhD, the director of OSCI, the planning process before the students ever reach the community is an important factor in determining whether they should engage with a particular community.

“Our professionals, who are invited to different teams to do the necessary site investigations, check out the area, establish contact with key persons in the area, figure out how to best bring students to the area, figure out if there’s an output that is required from the students, so that usually takes up a lot of our time,” he said.

The choice of location for these programs comes from a variety of factors, not all necessarily determined by the office. The office itself has begun to move towards discipline-based learning, which means all the OSCI activities will be related to the students’ courses. The Office of the Vice President of the Loyola Schools has declared, in a mandate given to OSCI, that there must be a shift from service alone to a more discipline-based service program. This is especially evident with Intact and NSTP-Plus, in which department chairpersons may suggest an area or give a general description of the kind of area they would like the students of their courses to visit. OSCI will then look into the area.

On the other hand, the seniors’ immersion program, Praxis, is closely tied with the course A Theology of the Catholic Social Vision (TH 141), while JEEP, the labor exposure program for juniors, is closely tied with the courses Philosophy of the Human Person I and II (Ph 101 and Ph 102).

The difficulty with incorporating discipline-based learning is that the philosophy and theology classes are made up of a mix of students from different courses. Though there are some departments that inform OSCI, the Theology Department and the Philosophy Department ahead of time, majority of the immersion areas are not a direct application of a student’s course.

Evaluations for these areas are regular and stringent. Floy Soriano, a formator for NSTP-Plus, divides the process into the phases of pre-engagement, engagement and post-engagement. She said that after the site investigation, there are weekly monitoring and feedback-giving, and the OSCI formators, area coordinators and monitors conduct semester-end evaluations.

At the end of the evaluations, OSCI may find itself withdrawing from partnerships with certain communities, but these are always decided on a case-to-case basis. At times, there may be lack of support from the community, or a lack of participants who want to take part in the program. Sometimes, it is logistically difficult to continue the partnership.

Dela Cruz thinks that OSCI has prepared for such situations. He said, “It’s easier for us to detach from communities given our current strategy of working with partners.”

The “partners” he is referring to are the clients who work with OSCI and who ask for data on the communities that are obtained through programs like NSTP-Plus. These clients range from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to private organizations that meet the criterion for helping the community. The partners make use of this data to better their existing services or to have an idea of what services can be offered. “In a sense, we’re helping the people who are helping the communities,” Dela Cruz says.

Dealing with conflict

For the JEEP and Praxis programs, OSCI is able to assist their long-time partner areas in other ways. “All partner organizations, communications and institutions are priority areas during disasters,” says Soriano. According to her, formators are made to coordinate with their assigned partner areas during calamities. Donations coming from alumni, for instance, would have to pass through OSCI so that the formators can determine which area would benefit from the items.

However, this begs the question of whether the “assistance” is sustainable or if the communities may end up becoming dependent on aid. Although the Ateneo can offer other forms of assistance to these communities, it leaves out the issue of what happens to them and their possibly being dependent on this aid when the program finally ends or when the school is forced to pull out from the program. Given that aid has already been given and the communities expect that of the office, is it fair that OSCI pulls out?

Dela Cruz maintains that the school does not simply enter and offer help that is unsustainable. There is always a plan that is executed within a given timeframe so that at the end, “it can go on without you.”

“I think there’s a realization [on the area’s part] that students and the university will come and go,” Dela Cruz adds. But he emphasized on helping the communities create a program instead of implementing one themselves. For example, students can teach the community how to set up their own feeding program, so when the students pull out, the community can continue the program on their own.

Shifting perspectives

Still, some programs do not seem to inherently offer service. JEEP and Praxis are more about exposure. To some extent, for exposure to be possible, there must be a difference between the quality of life as well as the living standards of the students and the communities. On the one hand, there is a strong volition to help the marginalized, but on the other, if they were not in these situations, the immersion programs would be ineffective.

Dela Cruz admits that there could be a conflict of interest between service and exposure, but adds that within the last 10 years, there has been a shift towards more service learning, which is very evident in the structure of Intact and NSTP. He says that the implementation of OSCI’s immersion programs is “not poverty tourism.” He explains, “We don’t want to keep them poor so that students will have some place to go.”

The OSCI programs emphasize the existence of bigger, more established organizations that are already operating within these communities so that Ateneans will know that there are tangible and concrete measures currently in place. Dela Cruz adds that the problems being faced by communities span several generations, and seeing these organizations will show students that something is being done already. This is so students will not feel “like they’re Messiahs, like they’re being called upon to save particular communities.”

In order to make this thrust more apparent, OSCI is starting from the bottom up. They have begun to revamp the InTACT program to make it more discipline-based, and they are currently working on NSTP. Their next hurdles will be the third and fourth-year programs, as they are heavily tied to academic courses. Plans can be made after the up-coming deliberations on the curriculum.

Sustainable social responsibility

Ideally, the revamping of OSCI programs will start with OSCI, but, in the end, can be applied by the students. Dela Cruz thinks that perhaps more efforts can be made to inform students about how the formation programs affect the communities. Currently, there are orientations and processing sessions for the four activities, but he believes in further involvement from the partner clients, such as speaking to the students in person.

Christian Bernardo, a JEEP formator, believes that the actual help depends on the model. According to him, there is now a trend of JEEP locations becoming service learning and discipline-based as well. Though the increasingly discipline-based nature of OSCI programs comes from a mandate from the office of the Vice President of the Loyola Schools, JEEP has always had communities under labor, NGOs, government work, environmental work, work with the elderly and persons with disabilities. And with these different sectors, providing help is still possible.

Regarding possible benefits exposure-intensive programs like JEEP have for the community. Bernardo says that JEEP areas usually have to do with manpower and networking. For instance, if the JEEP area belongs to the labor sector, “what we help [with is] in the manpower, and the exposure helps in the promotion of their stores.”

He adds that the reason for exposure is that there is something wrong. The goal is to have students who are exposed and aware enough to decide to continue doing something about the problems. One day, there will no longer be any need for exposure; that is what OSCI is working for.

Even now, student involvement is highly encouraged. For students who want to return to the communities during the semester they are assigned there, they need only inform OSCI and arrangements will be made to visit the communities. For succeeding semesters, OSCI does not place a limit on contributions made to the community for establishing a deeper relationship with them.

OSCI is looking towards long-term solutions, and being able to recognize that the marginalized deserve equal opportunities is an extension of recognizing the common humanity everyone shares. Dela Cruz ends the topic of having future visits to the community by explaining, “If you build relationships with people in the community, that’s actually quite good.”

Editor’s Note: Due to oversights in the editing process, the original article that appeared on this site contained a misleading introduction. This has since been reverted to one more reflective of the article’s intended angle.