SEED II: Solidarity vs. Charity

"Taking care of those in need is valuable and honorable work, and most people do it with generosity and good intentions. But it also serves to mask the inequitable distribution of jobs, food, housing, and other valuable resources. When temporary shelter becomes a substitute for permanent housing, emergency food a substitute for a decent job, tutoring a substitute for adequate public schools, and free clinics a substitute for universal health care, we have shifted our attention from the redistribution of wealth to the temporary provision of social services to keep people alive."

from "Social Service or Social Change?" by Paul Kivel
in The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex
edited by INCITE! WOMEN OF COLOR AGAINST VIOLENCE

"Solidarity is not charity. It is the mutual support between two peoples struggling for the same objectives." from Non-Intervention in Chile, 1970s

During our final SEED II meeting, we pondered the following excerpt from Flaurie's Solidarity vs. Charity workshop at the 2009 White Privilege Conference in Memphis.

1. Most people who engage in community service care about others and want to help those who need help.

2. There are positive, authentic, valuable community organizations out there that respond to people's needs.

3. The language around much of this work reflects biases of race, class, gender and other forms of privilege and oppression.

4. Most charitable organizations seek to alleviate most obvious manifestations of poverty but do not question root causes of poverty.

5. Many non-profit organizations in the community service sector have no activist base and are not accountable to any social justice movement. A volunteer corp is not the same as an activist base.

6. In schools, service-learning projects are often held up as the model for community service work, but we need to look critically both at the word "service" as well as what is being learned.

7. Organizations that take American abroad to do work generally do not spring from local, organic struggles, but rather from perceived needs on the part of U.S. citizens. As such, they are often not tied to any liberation movements in the host countries, and have no interest in addressing root causes or real liberation.

Q: What thoughts are running through your mind? How do the above pieces compare with your own thinking? What are your worst fears and best hopes as we move forward in this work?

The Intersection of Leadership, Information Fluencey, Technology, Global Education and Social Justice

Through my own work this semester (lots of listening, synthesizing of information, research, reflection) and the work of the "action" team, here's a working draft of the core beliefs at the intersection of the leadership, research skills, technology, global education and social justice:

Core beliefs

We believe a 21st century education provides students with the skills, tools, knowledge, and opportunities for real world engagement in tackling our planet's issues. Creating this educational experience requires a learning community that integrates students, faculty, staff, parents, & members of the community both local and global; a program that integrates a curriculum on global education, collaborative learning, leadership, and social justice with a pedagogical approach that includes diverse methods in utilizing human powered networks; a learning ecosystem that appreciates that learning and teaching happens in both formal and informal contexts and which values risk-taking as a necessary step in an ongoing reflective learning process.

To develop of program of this nature, we need:

• To respect and encourage each other's ability, creativity, and risk taking in our learning community.
  
• To actively include members of our universal learning community in our work.
  
• To provide students with inter-disciplinary, authentic, student-centered opportunities for real work focused on opportunities for promoting social justice and collaboration both locally and abroad.
• To open ways for students to be innovators, creators of knowledge, savvy consumers of information and producers of meaningful artifacts.
• To understand that we are all teachers and learners.
• To be intentional about the time we have available.
• To allow students to lead and build a positive impact over the course of their lives beyond college. To allow students to build significant lives.

Questions:
What thoughts are running through your mind? How do these core beliefs compare with your own? What are your worst fears and best hopes as we move forward in this work?

-Posted by Heidi Chang