In this seminar we will examine some key aspects to launch meaningful and successful community service projects and we will present concrete examples.

In general terms, community service projects are pre-professional practices through which university students perform a set of activities, articulated with the curricular contents of the career they aspire to graduate.

Through these practices, universities seek a more comprehensive training of their graduates, ensuring their excellence as professionals, while promoting their flourishing as individuals committed to citizen virtues.

Faculty are a key element for the implementation of these practices, as they promote a sustained reflection process throughout all stages of the project.

A meaningful community service project is one that fosters the transference of knowledge as the hub of student-community interaction; searchs for innovative solutions to existing problems; encourages multidisciplinary integration of knowledge of both Basic Sciences and Social Sciences (acquired along the Core Curriculum and the degrees studies); and  stimulates the application and development of leading-edge technologies.

A successful project, after all, is one that meets a felt necessity of a community, and has a real and positive impact on its quality of life.

Fabiola Vethencourt, Ph.D. Professor of Yachay Tech. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science (2005), a Master’s Degree in Public Policy (1996) and a Licenciate Degree in Philosophy (1981). Before coming to Yachay Tech, she worked for teaching and research for more than three decades at the School of Philosophy of the Central University of Venezuela.