2019 Continuums of Service Conference

This presentation will share the story of the Napier Initiative, launched in 2010 to build intergenerational bridges between the residents of Pilgrim Place, a local retirement community, and The Claremont Colleges. Pilgrim Place is home to 330 residents, many of whom spent their careers in the United States and abroad as advocates for social change. As elders who continue to probe, connect and grow, they constitute a rich resource for helping talented undergraduates make enduring commitments to leadership for social change. Participants in this session will hear about the growth of the Napier Initiative from a post-graduate fellowship and mentorship program to the current format that also includes intergenerational courses taught throughout The Claremont Colleges. Each Napier course engages students and elder co-learners on issues related to peace, social justice, and/or environmental sustainability. The Napier courses include a community or civic engagement component, and also explicit discussions among instructors, undergraduates and elders regarding vocational commitment and leadership. The lessons learned from a five-year evaluation of the Napier Initiative will be shared and should be useful for spurring discussion about the challenges and opportunities of intentionally connecting community elders and college undergraduates in the collaborative pursuit of learning and social justice.

This interactive session will draw on the knowledge and experience of attendees, featured staff, student leaders and community partners connected to the USF McCarthy Center. Participants will discuss strategies for implementing programs to increase students’ participation in activities like voting and grassroots organizing. We will explore questions such as: What is your vision for student engagement in justice work on/off campus? How do you create space for student activism and launch formal programs? Who are your allies and partners and how will you overcome institutional resistance? What are some challenges and opportunities you face in achieving goals? To transition the discussion from vision to action, we will highlight two programs and share the mechanics of launching them, including challenges and opportunities inherent to the process. The case studies will include USF Votes, a voter engagement initiative, and the Community Empowerment Activist program, which connects students with grassroots advocacy organizations. This dialogical workshop is designed to be participatory--part story session, part power mapping. Attendees will acquire concrete examples on how to forge partnerships and build capacity to develop similar programs to strengthen our collective work to foster leadership and engagement for a more just, equitable, and sustainable future.

Critical service learning, through reflection on issues of power, privilege, and oppression, can result in students becoming ‘woke’ to issues of injustice, whether it is police brutality, health disparities, the school to prison pipeline, or inequity in education. At CSUMB, Service Learning Student Leaders guide service learners in the process of becoming caring, respectful community members. However, our ultimate goal is for students to go beyond a service perspective to a social justice perspective, that is, to become “woke” to systemic inequalities and to take action. After an introduction to the CSUMB Service Learning Leadership Program, the student leaders will share stories about how their identities play a role in their work as mentors and role models. From their marginalized and privileged standpoints, the leaders will show how they navigate the challenges of becoming social justice change-makers. The session will end with interactive small group discussions and story telling about staying woke and taking action. The audience will come away with ideas for how to encourage critical service learning practices so that students who become aware of social injustice feel empowered to take action about the injustices they witness.

Purpose: This session examines the work of radical community engagement professionals seeking to grapple with the hegemonic nature of the service learning/community engagement (SLCE) field across multiple contexts using decolonizing theories and methodologies.
Objectives: As critical scholars and activists have provided frameworks and principles to enact emancipatory practices, the two scholars in this session explore the possibilities of decolonizing practices within the field. Through storytelling, these radical scholars seek to remake history by uncovering, reevaluating, and addressing taken for granted phenomena in service learning/community engagement that perpetuate systemic inequalities and the oppression of subaltern communities.
Partners: The scholars in this proposed session see themselves as inextricably tied to the communities and people that they are conducting research, learn, and practice alongside. Situating themselves in two different contexts, one radical scholar transforming the institution from within, the other stewarding transformation across multiple institutions as an independent consultant, both seek to employ decolonizing principles in SLCE and SLCE assessment.
Impacts: Each scholar will highlight their liberatory vision for SLCE drawing upon their lived experiences, critical theoretical knowledge and the context within which they do their work. Participants will leave with models to develop or enhance their own liberatory visions.