Planning for the first ISI trip began in 1993 with Loyola University Ministry staff and 3 medical students. The program is now in its 27th year and has grown to over 70 participants yearly including medical students, nursing students, public health students, physicians, nursing clinicians and chaplains. Since its inception, over 1600 members of the Loyola community have immersed themselves in the values of simplicity, solidarity, spirituality, service and social justice. In recent years, the program has engaged with communities in:

• Belize• Bolivia• Dominican Republic• Ecuador

ISI is a 10 month process beginning with a mandatory interest meeting, and continuing into discernment, fundraising, reflection, education, orientation, and immersion. The focus of the trips is on personal development, cross-cultural exchange, and serving alongside others. Our partner sites include: nutrition centers, clinics and hospitals, community development projects, non-profit organizations, and churches or religious communities. While we learn much about international health care, our greater goal is to learn from and serve the communities we visit. We hope to return with experiences that will advance our commitments to social justice and advocacy and our lifelong practice of medicine. Even under times of travel restrictions, HSC Ministry is committed to providing online, virtual experiences focused on issues of global health, cultural immersion, relationship building, and our other program values.

Program Values

SIMPLICITY Traveling to regions of the world with less access to resources, we consciously choose to step out of our comfort zones to gain perspective and examine our own lifestyles in a new way. We intentionally let go of the familiar concepts of time, control, and power. This frees us to focus on building relationships rooted in our common humanity. ISI may give us a different perspective, allowing us to ponder the implications of global interconnectedness and interdependence: the ways that we see, judge and act in the world, as well as our needs and desires, our values and our choices.

SOLIDARITY ISI allows us to travel not just to "see sights," but to immerse ourselves in another culture. It challenges us to “settle in” rather than just “travel through,” to try to learn and understand the perspectives of those we meet. The experience provides opportunities to grow and learn from the wisdom of our hosts, as well as to work alongside them to improve their situation. This is not because we have “the right way” to do it, but because we’ve often enjoyed a variety and wealth of resources in our own lives, and we have a responsibility to use them wisely.

• El Salvador• Haiti• Maywood, Illinois• Mexico

• Pine Ridge Reservation,South Dakota

• US/Mexico Border(Arizona & Texas)

SPIRITUALITY Although most ISI trips are organized through faith-based organizations, this is not meant to be a sectarian religious experience. Rather, we hope it will meet each of us where we are on our spiritual journeys, continuing in the Jesuit tradition of “finding God in all things.” We make a conscious effort to reflect on our experiences in individual conversations and in a group setting, guided by a chaplain trained to facilitate this process. All are expected to participate openly and honestly in this process, which seeks to provide opportunities for insight and growth before, during, and following the trip itself.

SERVICE With the concept of solidarity in mind, we serve in a spirit of partnership – of working alongside, of understanding each other. ISI seeks primarily to serve the needs of the community as community members define them. This involves, but extends far beyond, medical service and the increasingly felt need for medical education about elementary hygiene, nutrition, and preventive health. However we serve, we strive for an exchange based on our common humanity, rather than on a have/have not or a giver/taker model.

SOCIAL JUSTICE Ideally, service should be coupled with a reflective approach to understanding unjust systems and structures which perpetuate the cycle of poverty—the systemic cause and effect relationship of global injustice. ISI emphasizes awareness of and discussion about these factors, as well as seeking solutions on a systemic level. In addition to our direct service, which in a sense is necessarily just putting a ‘band-aid’ on a gaping wound, we hope to begin or continue to walk the long, slow path of discovering and implementing development solutions for those trapped by systems of poverty and oppression.

For further exploration of the Ignatian Service Immersion program, please visit our website: https://hsd.luc.edu/isi/

You might also visit our YouTube channel to view our program slideshow HERE.

http://www.sustainablebolivia.org/http://alpinternational.com/dominican-republic/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoreZHwDofMhttps://hsd.luc.edu/isi/