Early Challenges

I'm still not quite used to the blog format. I realized a few days ago that I was treating the blog like a weekly television show. By that I mean I thought each post should be a self-contained entry in which I presented some aspect of my experience and then gave some pithy lesson I learned as closure to both the experience and the entry. I was, and still am, struggling with the early stages of trying to make a difference and I know now that if I wait until I have closure on those struggles it may be months before I post. So, at the risk of sounding whiny, here's what I've been wrestling with...

A quick recap of the situation: My two teammates and I are working with an afterschool organization called TOPPS in the city of Pine Bluff. Pine Bluff is an hour from Little Rock. Our schedule allows us to travel there one day each week for a maximum of 4-5 hours. All three of us got hooked on TOPPS after our first meeting with them. The small staff is dedicated to doing good works. Like many non-profits, TOPPS is struggling financially. They have both immediate and long-term financial needs. Because they operate primarily on grants, which have many stipulations about how money can be spent, they offer a wide variety of programs which meet the conditions of the grants they've won. Offering so many programs has led to both immediate and long-term focus needs. The staff realizes they're stretched too thin.

Enter three Clinton School students in the early stages of their service-learning education. Full of enthusiasm, but not much expertise. Also full of the philosophy "Help others help themselves." Similar to the "Teach a man to fish" philosophy. Most, if not all, of our early education here at the Clinton School has emphasized the importance of generating solutions to a community's problems by developing the strengths and assets that exist within the community through thoughtful conversation. Actions that result from the conversation should have long-term intentions. We are taught to avoid riding in on our horses, dispensing advice or money, and then riding away. The Clinton School is about sustainable development, not temporary relief. I'm sold on that idea.

Which leads to my frustrations of the past week: I don't know how to have the level of conversation necessary to get the ball rolling when our time at TOPPS is so limited. I don't know how to feel like anything except an outsider to the Pine Bluff and TOPPS community.

Two things have eased, but not alleviated, my frustration recently.
The first is one of my teammates who has a different perspective on the same situation. Latonya's glass is definitely half-full. She sees our relationship with TOPPS as a gift both for us and them and she doesn't mind that it's going to take a while to unwrap the gift. She has faith.

The second is a report written by students from the Clinton School who worked in Pine Bluff two years ago. The report details their 7-month experience working on a similar project in the same city. The early stages of their project were also frustrating for similar reasons and yet, by the end, they'd made significant contributions to the city. Reading about their struggles and strategies for dealing with them gave me hope. And also inspired me to keep posting on this blog despite not having answers. There is value in struggling together.

Too Busy Studying...

...to learn anything.

A Quest Begins

Yesterday marked the start of what the Clinton School calls the IPSP, the International Public Service Project. It is exactly what you would expect from the title: each student travels to a country that is not their home country and completes a service project. We first research organizations we might like to be of service towards, establish a relationship with that organization, determine a need that we can fill in the organization and design a project which helps the organization become more sustainable. That last part is particularly important. We are expected to do more than volunteer for the organization. Our project should in some way make a lasting contribution to the organization once we are gone. The common example given is that instead of teaching at a school in a developing part of the world, we might also develop curriculum to be left at the school or create a financial plan for the school that helps it have a long-term plan for remaining open.

Prior to speaking to any of the students or staff about the IPSP I thought I might like to work with Heifer International because of my past experiences traveling to Heifer Ranch with students from the International School of the Americas. I'm not completely dissuaded from that idea, but I am actively looking for other options right now. Heifer is a large, successful organization with a strong vision, a solid infrastructure and many volunteers. In other words, it is very likely that any short-term project I might do with them would not have a large impact. There is a strong possibility that I would have no direct contact with the people I was ultimately trying to benefit: the hungry in developing parts of the world. I would probably learn a great deal about what is like to be a part of a large, philanthropic organization though, which could be useful in the long run.

I'm more interested in grassroots organizations (also known as indigenous philanthropic organizations). As I begin my search for an organization, I'm looking for a small organization that I could have a large impact on in a short time. I shared my interest in conflict mediation with my advisor and he pointed me towards Plowshares. I share that link with you having looked only at the homepage of the website. I don't know much about it yet. If you happen to explore the site and be reminded of a similar organization, please share it with me. Exploring lots of options is the name of the early stage of this game.

Random Side Note: Picture Day!
Yep, even graduate school has picture day. Above is one of my school pictures for this school year. :-) I wonder if we'll get a yearbook too...

There's Always Somebody Somewhere

There's always somebody somewhere doing something to try to make things better. A lot of the time, there are multiple somebodies close to the same where doing different things to try to make things better. My goal while in Little Rock is to be less of homebody and to participate in as many things as the school has to offer. Today that meant going to the Central High National Historic Site to be prepared to volunteer at the 52nd anniversary Symposium on Social Issues. Today that also meant NOT attending Peanut Butter Plan event to help the homeless happening at the same time. Which takes me to one of the questions I frequently ask myself about community service: What if everybody who wanted to do some good got organized and prioritized? Could we actually knock some of these issues out completely?

Community service sometimes feels like playing whack-a-mole at the carnival. A problem or issue pops up and gets our attention so we focus on solving it, briefly. Then a different problem or issue pops up, so we focus on that one, briefly. And then another pops up, and then the first one we focused on pops back up again, and so on, and so on.

One of the reasons I came to the Clinton School is that I'm hoping to get a better understanding of the underlying sources of all of the problems and issues; I want to understand the machinery of the game. Then I'd like to pull the plug on as many of those moles as possible. Permanently.

For example, what if everyone everywhere who donated any of their time or money to any cause at all decided that, instead of spreading their resources, they would pump all of that money and time into Habitat for Humanity for a period of say, a month. Would all of the needs of Habitat for Humanity be filled by such a massive influx of resources? And then the following month everyone could choose a different organization and do the same thing. If we were actually able to eliminate the needs of some organizations, the next month we'd have a surplus of resources that could either go to solving multiple issues or reduce the time needed to solve the problem of the month.

Not realistic or feasible I know. But it's something I like to daydream about.

Listening to Gravity

The end of the second full week of school seems like as good a time as any to try to summarize the experience so far. Meeting and Reading is the briefest summary I can give. I think it's fair to say that one strategy employed by the Clinton School in preparing its students to do Public Service is to introduce the students to many people currently serving the public. We, the Class of 2011, have met politicians, philanthropists and each other. We've done too much Reading already for me to ignore it in any summary, but it's not nearly as interesting as the Meeting we've done. And Reading doesn't seem to be unique to the Clinton School; it's a staple of most graduate school programs.
The two most daunting aspects of the early stage of my journey are 1) A lack of vision and 2) An overwhelming amount of information.
Like many of my students at the beginning of their Make a Difference projects, I have a great desire to do some good, but no idea where to start. When I was the teacher I tried to give them ideas by having them watch movies, like Emmanuel's Gift and Paper Clips and Invisible Children, and read articles about people like Chad Pregracke. Now that I'm the student I recognize that all of those examples can be very overwhelming.
My current (and only) strategy for dealing with feeling overwhelmed is to listen closely to what I'm drawn most strongly towards. After listening to an ambassador, two congressmen, a political strategist and two philanthropists, I recognize that the philanthropists have had the most impact on me. They were good speakers, but definitely not the most dynamic of the ones we've heard. It was their message and not the delivery that has me most intrigued.
They spoke from the perspective of large grant-giving organizations who see doing good on both large and small scales. They spoke about trying to encourage sustainable community health through supporting indigenous philanthropic groups (small, local organizations).
By recognizing my reaction to their comments I think I may have taken the first steps towards developing a vision.

Public Service. Personal Growth. Elected Office.

Yesterday, as a ripe young 40-year old, I received my first nomination for elected office. Student government office that is.
Let's rewind a bit to my previous incarnations as a student and briefly recap my experiences in student government in elementary, middle, high school and college.

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That about sums it up. I've never, that I can recall, been elected to hold office in any sort of student government, or any other government for that matter. There's a pretty strong correlation between the number of elected positions I've held and my desire to participate in government as anything more than a voter. Never held a position. Never wanted to. I loathe bureaucracy. Seriously. I've always viewed most governments as red tape factories, whose primary function was to give people who like to talk something to do while the rest of the people work. And I prefer working.

Back to yesterday...I was minding my own business, goofing off with some classmates, while the rest of the student body of the Clinton School nominated their peers to represent them in various capacities when suddenly, I got nominated (thanks, Ivanley). The process is polite enough to allow a nominee to decline the nomination, which I pondered doing for several long seconds. On the one hand, I was definitely flattered to be nominated, but on the other hand, I have 40 years of the previously described bias against government. The last few weeks have started to chip away at that bias though. In listening to stories about Bill Clinton and speeches by Congressmen Vic Snyder and Mike Ross, I've come to see that some elected officials really want to serve the public. It was that idea that persuaded me to at least accept the nomination.

I accepted the nomination but my aforementioned biases won out when it came to voting. I voted for one of the other nominees. My classmates, however, voted for me. Don't get too excited - I'm not the class president (or as we say, 'representative'). I am, ironically, the elected official in charge of elections. My job will be to ensure a fair and efficient voting process for elections held during my term. In other words, low man on the elected totem pole. But still, I'm on the totem pole. Here's what that means to me. First and most importantly, my classmates, whom I have ENORMOUS amounts of respect for, voted for me. Every day I understand more the value of the respect of good people and these are really, really good people. Second, I will challenge myself to more thoroughly understand the processes of government. Personal growth in an attempt at public service through elected office. I'd think I was taking this way too seriously if I didn't get so giddy at the idea. :-)

I wonder

Below is a comment from a friend of mine and pastor of a church in Idaho.

Marci Glass said...

Thanks for keeping this blog so that the rest of us schlubs can follow along while you are off doing great things for the world!
Very exciting!

That sentiment has been in expressed in a variety of ways by a variety of people over the past few months.

To the right is a picture of another friend of mine in San Antonio. The little boy is a youngster from Haiti she and her family are in the process of adopting.
The adoption process has taken over a year already and many times throughout the experience it looked as if the boy would never join their family.

The little boy arrived in the United States right around the time I arrived at the Clinton School. As I pondered our two arrivals and the things we each could look forward to in the coming years, I found myself wondering if I would be learning anything at the Clinton School that would compare to what had just been done by my friends in San Antonio. In the next two years, I would be spending hours reading, discussing and practicing how to Make a Difference in the world, but would anything I learn be more important than the lesson of opening your heart and home to completely love another human being.
I also wondered about the home I left behind. As a teacher at the International School of the Americas, I had the opportunity to make an impact on many lives every year. After teaching for 17 years, I'd lost focus on how to make the most of that opportunity. In some ways I think I came to the Clinton School to remind me how to fully be where I already was.

So, Marci and other schlubs, no more of that schlub talk. As you pastor your church or love your neighbor or teach your children, remind yourself that you're making a difference wherever you are (and you're not paying tuition to do it). :-)