Service-learning as a pedagogy during the pandemic. The ‘UCA gives you a hand’ project

Abstract

One of the main objectives of Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina (UCA) is to articulate and complement the academic training provided to its students with an authentic lifestyle choice , that would encourage them to build a fairer world by responding to the specific social demands coming from vulnerable sectors of society. The university has thus worked to respond to some of the new problems that now affect us as a society due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, strategies have been developed to allow us to continue working with the community even during this period of social, preventive and compulsory isolation. Within the framework of the program ‘UCA + Comunidad en época de pandemia’ (UCA + Community in times of a pandemic), UCA has developed a project that we will discuss in this paper: ‘UCA te da la mano’ (UCA gives you a hand). The project, was jointly carried out by the Department of Psychology of the Faculty of Psychology and Psychopedagogy and the Directorate of Social Commitment and Outreach of the UCA, and it had a dual objective: providing a space for reflection and orientation for first-line response personnel and becoming a learning space for psychology students.