Community Engagement – DEV – The Umbra Institute – Study Abroad in Italy

On May 15th, 2023, Zachary Nowak, Jacopo Bernardini, Manuel Barbato, and Amanda Fontana, all of The Umbra Institute, presented at the Roundtable Session on Education and Social Change hosted by the School for International Training. The roundtable conference, organized as a launch event for SIT’s new Journal of Critical Global Issues, took place virtually across three days. The Roundtable was a forum for the Umbra team to present their findings on assessing community-engaged learning at the Institute and explain how it positively impacts the students’ openness to diversity and universality. In addition to their panel, the Umbra team was joined on the panel by two other international education professionals. In their presentations, the other panelists explored the power dynamics within COIL programs and internationalization policies within higher education in the United States. It was a wonderful opportunity for members of the Umbra staff to engage with other scholars and professionals in the field to examine the future of international education.

In their session, the Umbra presenters discussed the research they are conducting to assess how the experience at The Umbra Institute changes students in measurable ways. The latest part of this ongoing project was the attempt to evaluate whether community engagement, in both students’ free time and as part of their coursework, has aided in the growth of students during their time abroad. Community engagement has long been a central pedagogical pillar of the Umbra Institute and is well-integrated into academic and extracurricular offerings. Although the Institute recognizes the importance of community-engaged learning, it is also important for the empirical data collected in this research to demonstrate which facets of the student experience play the greatest role in the students’ growth. Courses with service-learning components, Seminar and Practica courses, volunteering, spending time with local people and university students, and placing importance on learning Italian are some of the most influential aspects of student life that have a positive influence on expanding one’s openness to diversity and obtaining a more culturally-rich experience while in Italy. This research is part of an ongoing study that will be carried out and updated in future semesters. However, the current findings will be published in an upcoming academic publication. Stay tuned!

by Brooke Duda, University of Connecticut

I chose to take the Critical Disabilities course at Umbra because it aligned well with my previous involvement with special needs communities at home. This course allows students to work closely with VIVA Sports Association, which is the first athletic program for children and young adults with motor and/or intellectual disabilities in Perugia.

I have a lot of experience interacting and working with disabled individuals. In high school, I coached Unified Sports and helped teach American Sign Language, integrating students with and without disabilities. I helped run an annual campaign called ‘Spread the Word: Inclusion’ to eliminate the use of hateful vocabulary. This past summer, I worked as an Inclusion Coach, providing support to individuals with special needs so they could participate with their non-disabled peers in a variety of Park System programs.

I thought that learning about how disability is handled and viewed in another culture would be extremely valuable for my career interest in speech pathology. I wanted to become more cognizant of cultural differences and learn new ways to view disabilities. This course met and exceeded my expectations. Viva was the place where I felt most integrated into the local community during my time in Perugia. Each Monday we met in the classroom and every Wednesday we took a bus to the gym that Viva uses.

The greatest challenge was the language barrier. Our class has five students and none of us are fluent in Italian, so communication was difficult, particularly in the first few weeks of the course. However, playing sports allowed us to communicate in a more physical way. We could observe and learn the rules by example from the other players. As we came each week, the volunteers and participants started to recognize us, say hello, and invite us to participate. Even though I couldn’t hold long conversations, my introductory Italian class helped me recognize some words and be able to ask and answer basic questions.

The students in our class alternated between two three-hour shifts. I had another class afterward, so I was always on the early shift. The first few hours at Viva were more structured than the second half, so we played basketball every week as a team. The players were mostly young adult men with various disabilities, including Autism Spectrum Disorder and Down Syndrome. Those who had a harder time keeping up with the fast-paced games would stand on the side, where they would occasionally get the chance to shoot the ball and earn points for their team.

Later in the day, more people came, including people with visual or physical impairments like wheelchairs, as well as some younger participants. After the more structured, high-level games ended, the environment became much more relaxed. The students in the second shift got the chance to interact more one-on-one with Viva participants, walking with them, and helping them complete obstacle courses and other games like Ping Pong.

This course allowed us to apply what we learned in class to an environment outside the classroom. We discussed the connection between sports and disability and how all children have similar motivations to be active. This was clear to see at Viva, where everyone seemed very excited to participate and be part of a team. Disabled children are unfortunately less active, on average than non-disabled children. Inclusive sports programs are very impactful to help close that gap. Sports are beneficial in many ways, including health, problem-solving, teamwork, social skills, goals, learning, empathy, and communication. The biggest benefit I saw at Viva was social inclusion. I could see friendships form and evolve over the semester between participants, in addition to feeling valued as part of a team.

This course helped us see the benefit of programs to include people with disabilities, who are often excluded from mainstream society. I enjoyed making connections between my experiences in the States to my experience at Viva. I learned how to communicate with a language barrier and saw the value of inclusion in a new context.

On December 13th, professor Viviana Lorenzo and the students from her “Green Cities: A Sustainable Future” class invited Umbra faculty, staff, and students to visit the Orto Sole didactic urban garden and see all the amazing projects her class has been working hard on during the Fall 22 Semester.

Until recently, the urban garden known as “Orto Sole” (pronounced “orto-so-lay”) was a mostly forgotten steep agricultural plot on Perugia’s north-facing hillside. Several years ago a non-profit association was created to re-develop this area as an urban garden: its members rebuilt the garden’s terraces, pruned the grape vines and aging fruit trees, and started hosting community groups in the beautiful green space just below the city’s most famous panorama – Porta Sole.

In September 2021, the Umbra Institute assumed management of Orto Sole to revitalize the garden and develop it as a living laboratory for the Institute’s Food, Sustainability and Environment program. The Institute will use the green urban hillside as its “outdoor classroom”: continuing the garden’s use as a didactic space, exploring new agricultural technologies, and sponsoring community-engaged learning projects with local partners.

After much work done during the Fall Semester of 2022, The hopes and expectations of Green Cities’ students are that Orto Sole will not only become a community garden and a place that contributes to the beautification of Perugia, but first and foremost that it may slowly grow into a space dedicated to sustainable agriculture, starting with the use of recycled material only.

Some of their projects for example involved the creation of Hugekultur, layered mounds of decaying wood debris and other compostable biomass and plant materials, left to break down in time into a nutrient-rich raised bed. Another project of agricultural value was surely the Worm Towers, structures where worms will gather and consume the organic compost inside, and will then spread in the garden and fertilize the soil.

As for community value projects, we have some beautiful ones too! From spots and benches where you can sit and enjoy some tea, to wooden and ceramic boards all around, up to the embellished stair area with lights and candles, all culminating with the significant Gratitude Tree! This project was inspired by Orti Dipinti in Florence, and students wanted to recreate it here together and hang up gratitude notes, either for their hard work or for their study abroad experience and the friends they made here, given that, as student Shreya affirmed, “people make places.”

Student Jenna Bryant said as well: “Orto Sole was and forever will be my favorite place to be in Perugia. A lush green food forest in the heart of Perugia, overlooking the green rolling hills of Umbria, was always a place that made me feel at peace during the past 4 months abroad and I can’t imagine my time without it. I always enjoyed volunteering weekly in the orto and getting my hands in the soil, even if it meant being covered in mud and dirt for my next class. I am really proud of what we accomplished as a class this fall semester in Green Cities. I feel like we really made all of our goals and ideas come to life, and it is great to see that we have left a permanent physical mark on Orto Sole.”

Needless to say, we are proud of the work that has been put into the Orto, and both as Umbra body and as part of the bigger Perugian community, we hope more will continue to be done in the future!

To learn more about Umbra’s Community Engagement programs and activities, check out our website at: www.umbra.org/community-engagement-abroad/.

By Angelie Roche, St. Mary’s College of Maryland

Of all the fears I’ve overcome while studying abroad, I never expected to overcome my fear of teenagers. I love to teach and have a lot of experience with young children, but the idea of entering a classroom of fifteen-year-olds filled me with dread. I was always afraid that they might judge or disrespect me, especially since I’m not much older than them myself. So, when I decided to volunteer as an English tutor at an Italian high school, I was deliberately stepping out of my comfort zone. Not only was I going to teach a 45-minute lesson to a group of teenagers, but I would have to navigate a language barrier in a school system that was completely unfamiliar to me.

Entering the classroom felt like being a celebrity. All twenty of the students were clustered in the front, enthusiastically shouting “good morning!” Throughout my presentation, there was never a moment when they were completely silent, but it wasn’t a disrespectful sort of chatter – it was as if they could not help but voice their thoughts out loud. It was clear they needed more action: I was given the freedom to teach them whatever I wanted, so why not create a lesson that allowed them to actively participate throughout?

During my next visit, I made my lesson a lot less lecture-centric. I allotted much of class time to answering students’ questions about American culture– they had so many! They were curious about school sports teams, the price of college, and the American education system. As soon as I discarded my presuppositions about what English tutoring should look like, I was able to provide the students with what they really needed – a discussion. Weaving through the hundreds of Italian students on their way out, I was smiling– I had gotten a class of teenagers to not only listen but to engage and have fun. Though I wasn’t “tutoring” in the traditional sense, the students were still being challenged to ask questions in English and think deeply about the cultural differences between our two countries.

Meanwhile, my Human Development in Culture class was preparing our Service Learning project: designing a creativity-based English lesson for middle school students. At first, the task seemed daunting; how were we to know what would engage a bunch of 10 to 13-year-olds, or even what amount of English they would understand? But after spending time in the high school, I felt more confident, volunteering to be the “instructor” in the classroom I was placed in.

Despite my preparedness, though, when I saw I was with the oldest age – 13-year-olds – I again began to doubt myself. We had pictured younger middle-schoolers when designing our lesson. The task was to have them draw monsters using characteristics they had written in English, and then write a story about their monsters together. When I walked into the class, I was met by 20 teenage eyes, and silence – unlike in the high school, these students gave me their full attention, which was almost more nerve-wracking. They were shy at first, looking around at their classmates’ work before beginning to draw. I remembered being thirteen myself and wondered if a monster-drawing activity would be “uncool” to me. Standing in front of the classroom, I suddenly felt small– what if it didn’t work out? What if this wasn’t what the students needed?

But, to my surprise, the classroom soon transformed from awkward silence to a chattering, lively discussion. Students spent a long time designing and coloring their precious monsters, and even longer constructing detailed stories. After the first brave group shared, hands began shooting up; everyone was excited to show off their monsters. Just as I did in the high school, my classmates and I had to tweak our planned lesson to meet the students’ needs; some steps took longer than others, and we completely changed the “sharing” portion at the end so that groups could show their monsters to the whole class. But my favorite part was seeing smiles on the 13-year-olds’ faces and realizing they had fun doing our silly monster activity.

When I said goodbye to my noisy, chattery group of Italian high schoolers during my last week of the program, I felt a mixture of sadness and accomplishment; I knew I’d miss them. At the end of the class, the teacher told me that one of the students– the “class clown” who always bombarded me with silly questions– had actually been too nervous to speak in English before I came. My experiences have given me not only a renewed confidence in my ability to command a group of older students but a heightened cultural awareness. Every group needs something different: some, like my high school class, need more engagement; others, like the 13-year-olds, just need an extra push to be creative. I also learned that a language barrier is nothing to fear, but that it’s important to consider how and what you are communicating to students.

As a Psychology major and an Education minor, the opportunities I’ve had here at Umbra have helped me grow by leaps and bounds. I stepped outside of my comfort zone this semester, and could not be more grateful for where it has taken me.

To learn more about Umbra’s Community Engagement activities, check out their website at: https://www.umbra.org/community-engagement-abroad/.

By Shreya Dhume, University of Connecticut

On November 11th, students of Digital Marketing: Wine and Wineries of Central Italy took an early morning bus to Torgiano to learn about the history behind one of Italy’s most renowned wineries: Cantine Lungarotti.

This semester, students have been exploring digital marketing principles and applying them to the Italian wine industry. We have examined different tactics marketers use to promote their products and brands, and will even be participating in a service learning project in which we create a marketing plan for Romanelli, a winery we visited in September. Students were pleased to find that Lungarotti provided an opportunity to delve further into these marketing concepts.

First, we received some insight into the winery’s origins. Lungarotti is a local, family-owned winery that was founded in 1962 by Giorgio Lungarotti. The company prides itself on its commitment to quality production, sustainability, and family values.

Students were led inside the winery to see the different stages of the winemaking process. The first room contained tall steel tanks where the wine fermented, and in another room, we saw different size barrels where the wine was kept for aging. There also was a cellar where bottles of wine were tucked away for yeast fermentation. The most notable part about our tour was that, beyond seeing the steps of wine production, we also witnessed packaging and labeling–student Emily Simeone said this was her favorite part about the visit.

Next, students heard from Francesco Zaganelli, export director for Lungarotti. Francesco elaborated on the company’s consumer markets: Lungarotti has been able to penetrate new worldwide markets in the last few years, including the United States, Germany, Sweden, Thailand, and Canada. Professor Jacopo Cossater especially wanted students to see “how a winery manages to sell wine in the United States” and how “every state is different,” which leads to a dynamic marketing strategy. Seeing these ideas come together with a real wine company was truly eye-opening.

And of course, we ended the day with a wine tasting! Students tried the Torre di Giano white wine and classic Rubesco red wine. The white was “crisp, refreshing, and just sweet enough,” said fellow student Maddie Culkin. Brendan Fricke felt that the red had “many spices and tasted lighter than other red wines.”

Our day at Cantine Lungarotti was enlightening, as we saw classroom concepts come alive in an esteemed Umbrian winery. It was a fun day filled with touring, teaching, and tasting!

Click here to learn more about Cantine Lungarotti: https://lungarotti.it/ita/

By Angelie Roche, St. Mary’s College of Maryland

Many of the classes offered at Umbra include a service learning component, which enriches students’ education through unique community engagement opportunities. One such course is Critical Disabilities, which includes a weekly practicum wherein students go to Perugia’s community gym and assist with VIVA sports, an association that partners with professional athletic instructors to provide physical education to individuals with disabilities. VIVA was founded by Gabriele Bartolucci in 2011, and since then it has become one of the largest Italian organizations for individuals with special needs. According to Community Engagement Coordinator Manuel Barbato, the partnership between Umbra and VIVA began in 2016 and has since been a core component of the Critical Disabilities class.

Once a week, students take buses to the gym and spend three hours assisting sports instructors and participants with their activities. Student volunteers are not obligated to participate for the entire session, and are not given specific “tasks”; rather, they are invited to step in and help whenever they feel comfortable. That could mean assisting staff with dance lessons, ping pong, basketball, or even working one-on-one with a participant who looks lost or overwhelmed.

When I began going to the gym with my classmates, we were nervous – it was our first full “cultural immersion” experience, as hardly anyone spoke English and we were not exactly sure how we would fit in the chaotic, active environment. Soon enough, though, we pushed ourselves to participate. My classmate Xea Kirkland said, “[At first] I really struggled to talk with people, but the more I did it the more I got used to the uncertainty.” Since then, we’ve started to get to know the participants who come every week, and build trusting relationships with them. The language barrier is not always easy, but we’ve found nonverbal ways to communicate as well– sometimes that means demonstrating the activity yourself, or taking the initiative to go up to someone who’s sitting on the sidelines and motion for them to come join.

Physical disabilities are never seen as limitations there, and a huge part of working at VIVA is being able to see people as individuals and modifying each activity for them. If a child has a sight impairment, instructors might focus on building their other senses, encouraging them to crawl across mats or using tapping to direct their attention. Participants in wheelchairs are never separated from others; rather, instructors will find ways to modify parts of the obstacle course to ensure they can do every activity. Dance lessons are slow-paced and often change for each group, depending on the participants’ capabilities. This focus on ability rather than disability has helped reframe my mindset and build empathy between participants and instructors – everyone is equal there.

The most valuable part of the classes I’ve had here is what happens outside the classroom, especially when it involves engaging with people who are different from myself. The best sort of learning pushes students to challenge themselves, both socially and intellectually, whether that means trying to speak in a different language or learning to communicate without using language at all. Being at VIVA has brought not only a greater understanding of others, but a sense of joy and community – an ability to laugh at myself when I don’t make a basket, or cheer for someone else when they do.