LATIN AMERICAN CENTER FOR SERVICE-LEARNING

Prof. María Nieves Tapia - Director

Nieves Tapia is the founder and Director for CLAYSS, Centro Latinoamericano de Aprendizaje y Servicio Solidario
or the Latin American Center for Service-learning.  CLAYSS is currently leading the Iberican American Service-
learning Network which includes non-governmental organizations, public administrations and Universities from
the United States, Latin America and Spain.  As CLAYSS's Research Director, Nieves Tapia conducted the first
quantitative research on service-learning developed in Argentina.  She also serves as Advisor for Educación
Solidaria, the Argentina Ministry of Education's federal service-learning program for K-12 and Higher Education. 

She is a member of the Board of the International Association for Research on Service-learning and Community
Engagement, and represents Latin American on the International Association for National Youth Service Steering
Committee.  As Chief of Advisors of the National Institute of Youth, she directed the research for the Presidential
Project on Conscientious Objection and Substitutive Social Youth Service.  She also designed and conducted
Argentina's first federal K-12 service-learning program. 

For her work, Nieves Tapia has been honored as an Eisenhower Fellow (1988); National Service Fellow (1993),
and the National Youth Leadership Council 2001 Alec Dickson Servant Leader Award recipient. She has published
books and articles on service-learning in Spanish, English and Italian.

Among her most recent books:

• Service Enquiry/Servicio Cívico y Voluntariado. Volumen 2. Servicio Cívico y Voluntariado en Latinoamérica y el Caribe. Perold, Helene. y Tapia, Maria Nieves (editors) Buenos Aires, CLAYSS; Johannesburg, Volunteer and Service Enquiry Southern Africa;  St. Louis, Washington University, The Center for Social Development; Washington DC, Innovations in Civic Participation, 2007.
• Aprendizaje y servicio solidario en las instituciones educativas y las organizaciones juveniles. Buenos Aires, Ciudad Nueva, 2006.
• Educazione e solidarietà. La pedagogía del apprendimento-servizio. Roma, Città Nuova, 2006.
• Aprendizaje y servicio solidario. Cuadernos de educación para la acción social, 19. Editorial CCS-ICCE, Madrid, 2004.
• La solidaridad como pedagogía. El aprendizaje-servicio en Argentina y en el mundo. Ciudad Nueva, Buenos Aires, 2000.