Linda Vista Leaders in Action: Community Changemakers in Our Midst

By Dr. Mike Williams

At USD, we are dedicated to collaborating with members of our community to advance social justice and social change.  The Changemaker Hub, along with many other units on campus, such as the Mulvaney Center for Community, Awareness, and Social Action are always seeking to find ways to create more sustainable and meaningful interactions with our campus and local communities.  In this post, I want to share about efforts that are being made to enhance our relationship with our partners in Linda Vista community.

But first, I have a confession.  Despite the fact that I graduated from USD in 1992, lived in Linda Vista for year while attending USD, and I have been teaching at USD since 1999, until the last year, I was unaware of the many partners that USD had in Linda Vista.  Most importantly, I did not realize the extent to which Bayside Community Center is the hub of community organizing in Linda Vista and the importance it has for the educational mission of USD. 

Established in 1932, the Bayside Community Center has many important programs for the Linda Vista community and USD has collaborated on many of these programs for decades.  One such program is the Resident Leadership Academy.  The Resident Leadership Academy (RLA) is an innovative program that “helps residents gain knowledge and tools to make positive changes in their community….”  Through a ten-course curriculum offered at Bayside Community Center, community members are provided with the opportunity to further their knowledge and skills of leadership, community issues, and community organizing.  Upon graduating, these community members are expected to continue to be leaders in the community and to empower others to promote for positive social change in Linda Vista.    

 In 2014, Resident Leadership Academy graduates – also known as Linda Vista Leaders in Action – articulated their desire for further educational opportunities that would build upon their RLA training.  In response, Bayside developed the Cooperative Leadership Academy, a program that would provide even more training for the Leaders in Action to make a positive difference in the community. 

As Bayside was working with community partners to implement the Cooperative Leadership Academy, Dr. Viviana Alexandrowicz (Associate Professor in the School of Leadership and Education Sciences) was simultaneously working with Bayside through the Impact Linda Vista Initiative (a program supported with a grant from U.S. Bank and coordinated by the Changemaker Hub and the Mulvaney Center).  After her many discussions with community members at Bayside, she proposed establishing a program called the USD Open University Initiative, which would provide the Leaders in Action with the opportunity to take classes tuition free at USD.  The result is that this semester, there are six Leaders in Action who are enrolled at USD as part of this community-based initiative. 

The current Executive Director of Bayside, Corey Pahanish, explains the evolution of these programs and initiatives in this way: “Bayside Community Center was working closely with San Diego Cooperative Charter School, which offers a model that inspired Cooperative Leadership Academy. It was clear that the need for a deeper understanding of community challenges could be addressed in a harmonious business model that leveraged the academic prestige of USD and the community development understanding of Bayside, while empowering our diverse community to provide the wisdom and sweat-equity to impact change.... The RLA birthed the Cooperative Leadership Academy in conjunction with Bayside Community Center, a process within an existing movement [called One Linda Vista]…  The [] Cooperative Leadership Academy … best captures the One Linda Vista social movement, as well as the true nature of our collaborative community model and efforts….  This co-dependent model could not happen without USD’s Open University Initiative.”

The benefits of this initiative are many – for the Leaders in Action, for the USD students and for the

faculty.  As Dr. Viviana Alexandrowicz states, “From the USD perspective, Open University Initiative is a social justice initiative where we will have culturally and linguistically diverse community members as expert guests in our courses having equal access to curriculum. As a result, faculty plan to provide a richer learning experience for our USD students and participants alike.”

Last week, I was honored to meet the six Leaders in Action who are will be the first group to participate in this initiative.  As are all students at the beginning of the semester, they were both excited and nervous about their classes.  They had just returned from meeting with President Harris and they told me how welcomed they felt at USD and how anxious they were to “join” our community and for our USD community to “join” theirs.  They asked me how they could get involved with changemaking at USD and their desire to meet with the Changemaker Student Committee and share ideas.  It was an inspiring meeting and drove home thinking how fortunate USD is to be in such a vibrant and engaged community.

For me, what is special about this group of students is that they have dedicated their lives to the practice of changemaking.  Whereas there are many students, faculty, and staff that either aspire to make a positive difference in the world, or who are beginning their journeys along this path, these Leaders in Action are in the midst of seeking to improve education, healthcare, and civic engagement in Linda Vista.   While six of these Leaders in Action are taking classes at USD this semester, there is much that the USD community can learn from them as we seek to make promote positive social change on campus and beyond.  The Leaders in Action are not only role models of active, responsible citizens but they possess wisdom and knowledge that can benefit all of us.  It is indeed an honor that they are with us and I can only hope that they acquire as much knowledge in their classes and they will no doubt share with the USD community.

Changemaking at USD: Problem-Solving or In the Service of Change?

By Dr. Mike Williams

This is the first Changemaker Blog of the 2015-16 academic year!  To those of you who are returning to USD, welcome back!  And to those of you who are just beginning your journey with us, I am excited for you to become an active member of our USD community. 

USD is one of thirty campuses in the world that AshokaU has designated as a Changemaker Campus.  What this means for you is that we – our campus community - believe it is critical for you to not only become aware of your passions and interests, but also, to take actions that promote social justice and social change.  At USD, we intentionally define “changemaking” broadly so that it can align with your academic and personal interests.  The most important component of the practice of changemaking is providing students, faculty, and staff with the opportunity to utilize what they are learning, teaching, or researching to address a social issue at USD, in the local community, or in the global community.  We want our students, faculty, and staff to be engaged in their communities and to have as many hands-on experiences as they can.  In the end, we know that these experiences will help them become more active and responsible citizens.

There are many ways for you to get involved with changemaking at USD.  Whether you decide to submit a proposal to the Changemaker Challenge, join the Changemaker Student Committee, apply for a Changemaker Scholarship, become a Changemaker Summer Fellow, or incorporate changemaking into your curriculum, you will have an opportunity at USD to address important social issues that require innovative and sustainable solutions.

How you decide to practice changemaking depends upon many factors, including your own experiences, your interests, your intellectual curiosities, and the communities that you know the best. For example, for about twenty-five years, I have been interested in Africa, and specifically, South Africa.  Most recently, I have been fortunate to partner with a non-profit called Sharing to Learn and to work with a group of amazing young adults in the village of Makuleke.  These young leaders call themselves “The Equalizers” because of their goal to address educational inequalities in South Africa, starting with their own education in a rural village high school.  Without question, they are the most inspiring individuals whom I have ever met.  Over the last four years, we have taken students to Makuleke to meet the Equalizers and to collaborate with them on their efforts. 

This year was a particularly meaningful experience because for the second straight year we (the Equalizers, USD students, Dr. Lisa Nunn, and myself) held a USD/Makuleke Youth Leadership Workshop in the village – but this year we had even more Equalizers attend and the feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive.  Of the group of seven Makuleke students who created the Equalizers five years ago, three of them are now at university and earning degrees.  It was easy to leave Makuleke feeling as though there has been considerable positive changes over the last few years and that USD has been part of this process.

The reality, however, is much more complicated.  The truth is that there are deep, systemic constraints in Makuleke that will make the goal of achieving an “equal education for all” extremely difficult.  Even as the Equalizers attempt to implement innovative and new ideas to accomplish their goals – sometimes in collaboration with USD – the sort of change the Equalizers seek will not happen immediately.  This is the sobering reality of working on social issues like educational inequalities – the “results” of one’s work are often difficult to construe.

To practice changemaking does not mean that you will always “solve problems” immediately.  In fact, conceptualizing the circumstances and experiences of communities as “problems” is something that deserves careful consideration – and its own blog post!   The point is that as you think about the issues that matter to you, it is imperative that you recognize those who have worked on this issue before you arrived – whether they are students, faculty, staff, or local community members. Believe me, we have a passionate community at USD and there are many individuals who are committed to addressing the most serious issues of our day.  While at USD, you should build upon these efforts, and where necessary, improve upon them.  The bottom-line, however, is that you will not “solve” homelessness, poverty, or climate change during your time at USD.  Similarly, we will not “solve” the issue of unequal education in Makuleke in the near future, either.  But this should not constrain your efforts – nor mine – because the goal should not be to “solve problems” but to be in the service of addressing social issues that matter to you and exploring new ideas that will have a positive social impact.  “To be in the service of” means that we approach our changemaking pursuits with humility and that we understand that our efforts are linked to those of future generations (the Founders of the United States referred to this as “posterity” – it is in the Preamble of the Constitution, look it up!).

What will you do while you are at USD to be in the service of an issue that matters to you?  Whatever it is, I encourage you to work with other like-minded individuals to make a positive difference for your community and to leave a legacy and a path for others to follow.

Empathy and Social Action

Empathy and Social Action

Dr. Mike Williams 

Most Changemaker Campuses, including the University of San Diego, state that promoting empathy is one of its goals.  But what is empathy and why is it important?  Why is it something that is stressed at other Changemaker Campuses and at USD?  I started thinking about this more after reading Nicolas Kristof’s op-ed about empathy and then rereading David Brooks’op-ed on the same topic. 

There are many different definitions of empathy and it is a concept that has drawn the attention of numerous academics.  Indeed, there is a great deal of research, from a variety of disciplines, on the concept of empathy.   In addition, it is an idea that has found its way into our political discourse and policymakers often invoke it as a positive quality (remember when President Obama stated that he wanted to appoint a Supreme Court Justice that would empathize as well as be a sound legal thinker?). 

The most common definition, and the one that both Kristof and Brooks use in their op-ed articles, states that empathy is the ability to feel and share another person’s emotions.  Or to put it slightly differently, it is the ability to “put oneself in another person’s shoes.”  Most of the definitions I found stressed that empathy is about feeling what someone else may be going through.  It is often contrasted with sympathy, which is sometimes defined as feeling sorry for someone else’s condition – but not necessarily understanding what they are going through.  Over the past few months, I have been involved in numerous conversations with colleagues who always stress that USD programs, such as community engagement or changemaking, should promote empathy rather than sympathy.

For the most part, I agree with this.  I would much rather provide experiences for students, faculty, and staff so they could learn to empathize with others rather than simply sympathize.  To do this, however, it requires that we provide for experiences for members of the USD community to interact with each other and with other communities, that we understand the history of those communities or individuals we are interacting with, and that we appreciate the cultural, political, social, and economic contexts in which people make decisions.  Empathy, then, requires that we take seriously many of those courses that we currently find in our Core Curriculum and in our majors or minors, such as, those offered from history, literature, sociology, political science, art and art history, and ethnic studies (just to name a few).  As both Kristof and Brooks agree, empathy is a good quality for someone to practice.  But why?  To what end?

More specifically, why should USD as a Changemaker Campus promote empathy?  As I have discussed in a previous blog, the key aspect of changemaking is taking actions that promote social justice, common good and positive social change.  So, does having empathy actually result in these types of actions?  Kristoff would argue that positive social actions and empathy are intertwined.  In particular, he argues that service immersion trips are one way for students to learn about empathy.  He suggests that these trips create individuals who are much more likely to lead lives where they are engaged in promoting social justice.  Brooks, however, argues that “[e]mpathy makes you more aware of other people’s suffering, but it’s not clear it actually motivates you to take moral action or prevents you from taking immoral action.”  He goes on to say that “[e]mpathy orients you toward moral action, but it doesn’t seem to help much when that action comes at a personal cost. You may feel a pang for the homeless guy on the other side of the street, but the odds are that you are not going to cross the street to give him a dollar.” 

While we can debate whether giving a homeless person a dollar is the type of “social action” that we want to promote, Brooks’ larger point is one that we should take seriously.  Does empathy in fact promote social action?  I am not sure and I only have anecdotal evidence to offer in response to these questions.  I do think it is possible for people who do not have empathy to still take positive social action.  I also believe that it is possible for someone with empathy to take actions that may not produce the positive consequences he or she intended.  Still, through my experiences in South Africa, Uganda, Linda Vista, and City Heights, I am convinced that students, faculty, and staff are much more likely to take action with respect to a social dilemma if they have had an experience which enables them to empathize with the community with whom they are engaged.  I will discuss these specific instances in more detail in a subsequent blog, but for now, I simply wanted to raise the issue of empathy and present some arguments as to whether it is critical to our changemaking mission.

What do you think?  What experiences have you had where you empathized with others?  Did this motivate you to act?  The journey of becoming a responsible, active citizen, who engages with his or her community to promote social justice, requires continual reflection and adjustment.  As a colleague recently reminded me, social change is never linear and it is never inevitable.  If you are on this journey, I encourage you to share your ideas, to take action for those issues that you believe in, and to do your best to understand the historical, cultural, and contextual characteristics of the communities you are immersed.   

Magic and Resilience: Students Take Service Immersion Trip to New Orleans

This reflection was written by Celina Gonzalez ‘12 (pictured top row, far left) who traveled to New Orleans over spring break on a service immersion project back in 2012. Gonzalez majored in liberal studies with a concentration in mathematics, and took part in the teaching credential program for a special education and multiple subject credential.

A group of 11 young, female USD students and three faculty leaders embarked on a service immersion trip to New Orleans for spring break. A service immersion trip is unique such that it incorporates service learning and primarily focuses on creating relationships with people in the community to learn about their culture, their history, and their social justice issues.

My experience, as I am sure many of my group members will agree, is difficult to express in words without losing the authenticity of insight to the concepts we learned and activities in which we participated. However, three words that most effectively capture the essence of the service immersion trip are magical, resilience and kinship.

New Orleans is magical in its richness of music, food, history and second lines (a parade-like festivity), slow-paced comfort, and most importantly its people. The constant tune of the jazz brass bands on street corners provides a rhythm, to which one cannot resist dancing. The second lines demonstrate a community celebration of liveliness, music, food and an opportunity to be part of something larger than oneself. The specialties of the food, nowhere to be found but New Orleans, is part of learning the culture and socializing with people; the food brings the community together.

We experienced a snapshot of the history of New Orleans with a tour of St. Louis Archdiocese Cathedral, a Vietnamese community in East County and the Katrina and Beyond Exhibit in the Louisiana State Museum. The museum, in particular, helped broaden my perspective as I gained insight to personal stories, suffering and the glimmer of hope people retained. The jazz brass bands’ rhythm, the delicious Southern food of po’boy sandwiches, and the history represent New Orleans, but our  trip opened up our minds and our hearts to something beyond these attractions and into the true gem of New Orleans: the people.

A closer look into this magical essence reveals a resilient community with its ability to keep moving forward despite Hurricane Katrina, the loss of loved ones, the frustration caused by injustice and racism, and the violence ever so present in the community. Beyond these challenges, there lies this beauty and hope in the hearts of the people. The people were so willing to share their history and experiences. Each of them recognized how even in what appears to be a devastating situation or when you are ready to quit, something comes into your life that keeps you moving forward.

They share these frustrations but also share so much celebration of life through laughter and gatherings, their history and their desires to improve their community. The bonds of this community (maybe judged as fragile community by outsiders) demonstrate nothing less than strength, courage and love.

The word kinship resonates because our group was not only welcomed into this community with open arms but we too, extended our arms, opened our hearts and our minds to fully engage in these interactions and develop authentic relationships to learn, to love and to try to gain an understanding of New Orleans and its people. We met new people and learned from them as we painted at the Community Book Store (CBC), explored other communities, and developed a mutual trust and understanding. More than ever, we wanted to learn from those in the community and work with them to create a mural that projects the beauty, hope and resilience of the community.

Even within creating the mural, we developed more relationships and participated in a variety of
interactions, some challenging to the group but all the same because we took something away from each contact and experience. By the end, the finished mural and symbols on the outside of the CBC exceeded each of our expectations and projected several messages which depict characteristics of the community and our NOLA group, such as trust, resilience, and community.

We experienced the power and energy that coming together, whether in a small group, within a larger community, and/or a combination of the two can have in creating a representation of a community through shared experiences and interactions. These lessons learned promoted our personal growth as leaders and as a group, for our group dynamic was strengthened as we endured challenges in addition to learning experiences.

Participating in kinship was the heart of of my experience, for the community enriched my life, and in turn, I learned more about myself and my passion for service. Forever in my heart will I have this experience to share with our NOLA group and the people we had the privilege to meet and develop relationships within New Orleans as I continue to live a life of service-learning. I share our experience so that others can recognize the importance of community and service-learning and to provide a glimpse of the wonderful values and beauty the community of New Orleans has to offer.

As part of the NOLA group, I know that we left a part of our hearts in the “work” we did on the mural alongside the community and with the people we met. However, I also recognize that we each brought a part of New Orleans back with us through this shared learning experience which will impact the rest of our lives in unique ways. Learning to take time to see what people and communities have to offer as well as the mutual benefits of giving and receiving are important lessons to remember as we participate in future interactions and community involvement.

It is not only that we gave a part of ourselves to the community, but rather it is that we received more in a variety of ways than we could have ever imagined to give.

— Celina Gonzalez ‘12