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Beyond Good Intentions Symposium

Travel, Learn, and Serve with Purpose

Beyond Good Intentions: Travel, Learn, and Serve with Purpose

Preparing for a spring break trip is more than just checking off your packing list.  Cultivating reflection before, during, and after community-engaged experiences helps us to be conscious of our own assumptions, and helps us to be open to learn from the people we will meet on the trip.  The Beyond Good Intentions (BGI) Symposium is a place where spring break trip participants meet to exercise the reflection muscle and prepare well for service and immersion experiences.

The BGI Symposium is free, and snacks and dinner are provided.  Join us to hear from a keynote speaker and to participate in breakout sessions designed to help you unpack your hopes and expectations about your trip.

INSTITUTE FOR LEADERSHIP AND SERVICE

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Institute for Leadership and service

Beyond Good Intentions

Travel, Learn, and Serve with Purpose

Friday, February 5, 2027
3:30-7:30 p.m.
Helge Center Multipurpose Room

Join us for this half-day event on February 5, 2027.  We will be hosting a keynote speaker that will share stories from his own time traveling with students to Nicaragua and the Great Lakes region.  Douglas Haynes will prompt us on the critical thinking and “slow hope” that comes out of trips like the ones we do at Valpo.

After the keynote, participate in breakout sessions on different topics, such as:

  • The Intercultural Development Index – a group debrief led by the Language and Intercultural Learning Center (LINC) on campus [WE CAN LINK HERE TO IDI INFO]
  • An interactive session about well-meaning development interventions that have gone wrong in Ghana, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic
  • Taking your experiential service to the next level with post graduation opportunities for service
  • Unpacking positionality and building our critical reflexivity muscle for service
  • And more!

The afternoon will close with a meal, when individual trip cohorts can sit together and talk about the implications of what they learned for their own trip.  

Snacks and dinner are provided!  

The symposium is free!  Some trip participants are eligible for a discount on your trip fees for registering and participating in this symposium.

A CAPS Fellows Program man with a light beard and brown sweater poses in front of birch trees.

Douglas Haynes is a writer and professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. He is the author of two nonfiction books, Teaching Toward Slow Hope and Every Day We Live Is the Future, and a chapbook of poems, Last Word. His essays and journalism have appeared in Orion, Longreads, Civil Eats, The Progressive, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many other publications. 

  • Students will reflect on their own approaches to service through facilitated conversations pre-departure.
  • Students will engage in experiential learning in elements of the intercultural development process, with the option to participate in the Intercultural Development Inventory.
  • Students will apply context-specific knowledge of culture, history, and political and economic and environmental realities, in service to others.
  • Students will demonstrate critical reflexivity about serving in and partnering with communities.
  • Students will practice collaborative leadership by setting shared goals and translating pre-departure learning into action. 

Want to learn more?

IDI ASSESSMENT

Intercultural Development

Facilitators of the Beyond Good Intentions Symposium invite you to become curious about intercultural perspectives as you get ready for your Spring Break Service Trip. When you register for the BGI Symposium, you will receive a link to the IDI Assessment.

Logo for the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) used by the CAPS Fellows Program.

Take an assessment through the Language and Intercultural Learning Center and learn about intercultural competence. Take the IDI by January 27.

Contact LINC Director at

How do you experience differences in your everyday life? No matter your Spring Break Service Trip destination, thinking about how you approach intercultural encounters across difference is beneficial. Here, we define “differences” very broadly:

  • First language, nationality/citizenship status
  • Faith tradition, cultural heritage
  • Age/generation, education level, race
  • Visible/invisible disability, ethnicity
  • Gender identity, sexual orientation
  • Socio-economic status, etc.

Intercultural competence is relevant in both global and local settings and refers to a person’s capacity to:

  1. Encounter differences in effective and appropriate ways
  2. Adapt speech and behavior, avoid assumptions, and adjust your point of view
  3. Navigate complex interactions in unfamiliar contexts across multiple cultural settings

  • The Intercultural Development Inventory is an assessment tool that measures your intercultural competence
  • Valpo students take the IDI through LINC – the Language and Intercultural Learning Center
  • Details: Online assessment, 50 items, culture-general in nature, cross-culturally valid
  • You can take the IDI for free if you are one of the first 25 students to register for the BGI. Registration deadline: January 20
  • IDI includes: Assessment with your results, BGI group debrief session, one-on-one debrief after the BGI, resources for making an intercultural plan
  • Deadline to take the IDI: January 27

  1. Learn about a framework for understanding how people approach and experience differences
  2. Take dedicated time to interpret and reflect on your results and general approach with a trained facilitator
  3. Apply the intercultural framework to the cultural setting(s) of your service trip destination
  4. Gain confidence as you anticipate intercultural encounters you may face on your trip 
  5. Receive resources for developing your intercultural competence after returning from your trip

Contact Information

Institute for Leadership and Service
Helge Center

1600 Chapel Drive
Valparaiso, Indiana 46383

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