Global Outreach! (GO!), a service and immersion program rooted in Jesuit values, is moving from the Center for Community Engaged Learning (CCEL) to Campus Ministry. GO! projects send students to communities in the United States and around the world to learn about inequality and work against systems of oppression.
“[GO! is] not only [about] global outreach, but also implementing what we learn in our communities here in New York,” said John Gownley, director of GO! and associate director of Campus Engagement.
According to Gownley, GO! started 62 years ago. It began with a group of students who wanted to go to Mexico and the university supported them in finding a project. Students wanted to do other similar projects, and the program grew from there. GO! has lived in many homes since then — it was once under Student Affairs, then it was a club in the 1980s and in the late ’90s GO! found a home in Campus Ministry. GO! moved to CCEL about five years ago.
GO! has had a powerful impact on student participants. Alexa Davidson, FCRH ’25, said that GO! has helped her “develop [her] leadership skills and a… foundational love for this program.” She has been involved with GO! since her first year at Fordham. This academic year, she is a co-chair of the GO! Director’s Advisory Board, working to improve the backbone of the program and support students involved in GO! projects.
Abigail Wilson, FCLC ’25, is the Lincoln Center Co-Chair for the Director’s Advisory Board. She works directly with Gownley and other GO! coordinators to create plans for formations, fundraising, and marketing. She offers peer support to GO! leaders and compiles toolkits, organizes logistics, and facilitates committee meetings with the Rose Hill co-chairs.
She said that her experience with GO! has been transformative for her education. “GO! has taught me how to put myself in the shoes of those who have faced injustice and learn from the organizations that work everyday with their communities,” she said. She has connected what she learns in GO! to her psychology and urban studies majors.
Now, GO! is making yet another transition, this time back to Campus Ministry. Fordham University’s new department of external affairs will house CCEL and Fordham’s government relations team in order to help the program function more efficiently, according to a Fordham News article.
The decision received mixed reactions from GO! student leaders and administration.
Gownley explained, “GO! need[ed] more administrative support.” Many of GO!’s partner organizations are Catholic, such as Dolores Mission in Los Angeles and the Kino Border Initiative in Arizona. Campus Ministry may be able to offer more support in partnerships and in interfacing with foreign governments.
The transition to Campus Ministry will not have much effect on the program, according to Gownley. He and the other GO! staff will answer to a new supervisor, but they will “continue the mission of Global Outreach as it has always operated,” he said. “The program needs the support and now it will be supported by an office that knows the history of Global Outreach and has a shared mission.”
Although the mission and organization of GO! will not change, Davidson and Wilson, who have worked with GO! for years, feel that moving GO! to Campus Ministry is a mistake. Davidson is glad that GO! is staying in the Office of Mission Integration and Ministry.
“I do worry that the label of GO! under Campus Ministry may send the wrong messages and deter students from getting involved,” she said. As someone who is not religious, Davidson feels that she would likely not have participated in GO! had it been housed under Campus Ministry.
“Mission trips have underlying tones of superiority and savior complexes,” said Wilson. “GO! challenges these spiritual mission trips by acting as a service and cultural immersion program rooted in social justice awareness and community engagement through the elevation of the five pillars of Ignatian tradition: education, social justice, community, simple living and spirituality.” While spirituality is a theme of GO!, “why are we suddenly shifting the program from a center that values civic engagement and community [CCEL] to a center that values self-exploration [Campus Ministry]?”
“Campus Ministry and CCEL are siblings,” said Gownley. The two organizations share offices, and “there’s not going to be any of this ‘we don’t work with you anymore,’” he said. “GO! is moving to a familiar home, not a different one.”