ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights findings on service learning in post-communist countries and universities emergent from the literature along with evidence from university mission statements and strategic plans from different universities in Croatia and Lithuania that were analysed as part of the Erasmus+ Europe Engage project. It explores the obstacles to implementing service learning within higher education in post-communist countries, but also to address the ways in which civic engagement can become repositioned and revitalised, taking Croatia and Lithuania as examples. The contemporary situation of service learning in post-communist countries can partly be explained by an enduring communist heritage and historical legacy, along with special features and trajectories related to citizenship, civil societies and civic participation. Obstacles to implementing service learning in post-communist higher educational systems comprise a set of cultural and historical complexities. Service learning within the Lithuanian higher education is in general concentrated within two universities, namely the Vytautas Magnus University and Siauliai University.
