How Can College Students Create Change On-Campus and Beyond?
This post was originally published on The Case Foundation blog.
What can college students do to enact meaningful and sustainable change? How can campus-based initiatives boost civic engagement, personal well-being, and transformative learning? Students, faculty members, administrators, and expert speakers explored these questions at the fourth national Bringing Theory to Practice Conference held in Washington, D.C. on November 13th and 14th.
As a college student, it can be easy to live in the bubble of academia and to ignore what is going on in the outside world. The conference challenged students to step outside of that bubble and view themselves as engaged learners, active citizens, and agents of change.
This paradigm shift is exciting for several reasons. First, it encourages students to become engaged in their own education and to view themselves as more than passive recipients of learning. Second, it empowers students to become involved in bottom-up institutional change that can impact their campus, their society, and the world.
Architects of change
Donald Harward, senior fellow and director of the Bringing Theory to Practice Project, encouraged each student to think about what change really means, how it works on their campus, and how to become involved as an active changemaker. With the increase in popularity of social networks like Facebook and Twitter, the implications of change and the nature of civic engagement have shifted - both on-campus and off. Harward noted that while social networking is valuable for increasing the number of participants involved and for organizing volunteers quickly, it is just one dimension to affecting change. He urged students to become engaged not just horizontally, but also vertically:
The most desirable way to intensify the conditions needed to affect change, perhaps accelerate change, would be to combine social networking on one level - with its somewhat disorganized but widely dispersed appeal that reduces marginality - with more strategic and critically organized apparatus and leadership for change.
According to Harward, vertical participation involves “active, deep, and prolonged involvement... requiring a high level of accountability and action steps that are intentionally demanding.” This type of engagement might involve organizing and facilitating discussions, holding workshops or seminars, assembling a task force, or spreading your views in writing. Without a strategic and committed element, change remains shallow and unsustainable.
The importance of risk
Harward challenged all students to create change by making deeper commitments and taking risks. Rather than clinging to comfort and familiarity, he urged students to “champion a contrarian voice,” to explore new and different beliefs, and to take on change in a public arena. Panelist Darin McKeever, senior program officer at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, echoed some of these sentiments, encouraging students to take risks with “untrampled enthusiasm,” assume leadership roles, and seek new ways to reach common ground with people from different backgrounds.
Responsibility
One of the primary themes at the conference was responsibility - to oneself, to others, and to the community. Taking responsibility involves more than a conscious decision - it is also about taking action. Decker Ngongang, vice president of programs at Mobilize.org, held a workshop that highlighted ways Millennials can promote civic engagement and upgrade democracy. He suggested first finding an issue you are passionate about, then educating yourself about it and defining a mission. The next steps are goal-setting, team-building, and forming partnerships with other individuals and organizations. He also emphasized using social media to raise awareness, increase participation, and build a network. Above all, he stressed the importance of communication and collaboration - spreading the word about your cause or organization, even to people who might seem to be unlikely supporters.
Next steps
As a college student myself, I agree that student-based change requires a shift in perspective. It is crucial that students engage with their education beyond academics; ideally, this is a dynamic process that involves all facets of the institution, extending to faculty, administrators, staff, alumni, and trustees. The Bringing Theory to Practice Project definitely represents a big step in the right direction. Next steps might include reviewing examples of how these change models could work - perhaps by examining case studies of successful student initiatives - or continuing the conversation to discuss methods of measuring real impact.
What do you think? How can students become better equipped to enact change?
Guest blogger Lauren Scherr is an intern for the Case Foundation.
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Sparked and Catchafire: volunteerism is heating up online
Two very different sites are helping people to volunteer in ways that are convenient and rewarding to them. Catchafire and Sparked both provide ways for individual social citizens to find volunteer opportunities online and for nonprofits to find people outside their networks who might be able to help. While the two share the same end goal, they have very different approaches - Catchafire sources concrete, meaningful projects that individuals can complete using their unique skills, while Sparked helps people use their downtime to help nonprofits with microvolunteering opportunities.
The Catchafire Way
Hoping to improve New York City’s low rate of volunteerism, Catchafire is a little like an online dating site for volunteers. Volunteers share information about their experience, skills and interests, and in return, the Catchafire team sends the volunteer a matching list of project options. The volunteer then writes a note to the nonprofit organization expressing interest in the project, and the nonprofit chooses from the interested volunteers. Volunteers can also browse projects and organizations to see what types of projects are available at any given time. The projects are about three months in length, are designed for one person, and must have a concrete deliverable like a logo design, budget design and development, or a press release.
The goal is to connect volunteers with projects that can be completed on flexible schedules and that also exercise and build the volunteer’s skills, which could be attractive to grad students and job-seekers in this economy. Catchafire also helps volunteers quantify their contribution by estimating how much the project would cost the organization. Between now and January 31, Catchafire aims to matched volunteers with more than $1 million in nonprofit projects. So far, Catchafire is only available in New York City, but be sure to check out their website.
If You’re Not Ready to Catchafire, How About a Little Spark
For a volunteering platform where physical location isn't important, see Sparked, by The Extraordinaries. Sparked is built on the idea that people want to volunteer, but they might not have a four-hour block on a Saturday. What they do have is downtime – waiting for a meeting that was pushed back 15 minutes, waiting to board a flight or waiting for their frozen pizza to cook. With Sparked, "waiters" become productive do-gooders and nonprofits get some much-needed help. After signing up, volunteers have personalized home pages that suggest current challenges that might suit their interests and skills, but they can also browse by the nonprofit, the cause or the skill needed. They can see how others have responded to the challenge and add their own answer to the thread. Sparked also allows small businesses and corporations to run their employee volunteer programs through the platform, by making it easy to track volunteer hours but still allowing employees to maintain different interests, skills, schedules and geographic locations.
Sparked asks nonprofits to post challenges that can be done entirely online, can be completed quickly and have a measurable result, and they can post five challenges at once. Some examples of volunteer tasks posted include suggestions on companies a nonprofit should approach for sponsorship, tips on how to effectively use social media for 30-minutes each day, document translation, web redesign and logo design.
It seems the requests with the most responses are ones that essentially employ Sparked as a type of "Yahoo questions" for nonprofits, rather than a volunteering site. If a friend at a nonprofit asked you a question about how to use social media for their nonprofit and you spent a few minutes making suggestions or pointing them to resources, would you consider that volunteering? Probably not. But on Sparked, it is. Is this an expanded definition of volunteering, or is it not quite what the Sparked team intended?
Nonprofits asking for help with a very specific product like translation or graphic design might receive more substantial contributions, but even then, respondents seem to be tempted to tell someone how to do something rather than doing it for them, which may be the price you pay for targeting these tasks at people with only short amounts of time to spare. For example, one nonprofit posted asking someone to design a dolphin graphic. So far, three people have responded, each sharing websites where the nonprofit can find existing dolphin graphics. It's not that these responses aren't helpful, it's just slightly different – well, less, frankly – than what was asked.
Getting Warmer
Managing volunteers to produce something of value to the organization as well as a meaningful experience for the volunteer is kind of the holy grail of nonprofit engagement. Both sites aim to work with individual volunteers’ interests and time constraints, but they are aimed at different people prepared for different levels of engagement and who have different definitions of what makes a meaningful volunteer experience. And both have some of the same types of projects listed, but as nonprofits grow accustomed to using these sites, I expect that will change. They might use Sparked for information, research and brainstorming - small tasks for lots of people with a little time – and Catchafire for more thoughtful, skilled projects, like web or logo design.
As with traditional volunteer management, the key seems to be knowing what tasks make sense for this forum and audience and crafting your request in a way that will receive the most helpful result. Both sites have put thought and effort into steering nonprofits toward posting well-defined, measurable and time-appropriate projects, and that's a great start. These platforms won’t solve a nonprofit’s volunteering woes entirely, but used thoughtfully, they could certainly help nonprofits find the right people for the right tasks by opening them up to different online communities.
Try out one or both of the sites, and let us know your experience!
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Finding the Fountain of Youth
This past Saturday, November 13, 2010, social entrepreneurs and innovators gathered in Washington, DC, to participate in TEDxYSE (Youth Social Entrepreneurs): Unleashing Young Social Entrepreneurs. This special event [watch video] highlighted youth from around the world who are developing creative solutions to some of the world’s most pressing issues. Speakers challenged one another and the audience on a variety of subjects, ideas and solutions—with topics ranging from microfinance and foster care to journalism and discrimination.
What a Difference a Day Makes
Organized by Ashoka's Youth Venture, the event was part of a global competition among youth-led innovators who are addressing social issues affecting their communities. "The [competition] winners demonstrate the impact one person can make in the world," said Gretchen Zucker, executive director of Ashoka's Youth Venture. Contest organizers received more than 500 entries from 52 countries with eight finalists receiving $500 and consulting on their programs from Staples.
Actor James Cromwell, Academy Award nominee and supporter of social change, kicked off the day with inspiring words about the importance of social responsibility and making a personal commitment to improving society. He called for a “dramatic change” that will help create a paradigm shift and change of heart among the people. What followed was an inspirational series of talks, performances, and video presentations about youth empowerment. The contest finalists gave the “talk of their lives” TED-style on stage among an audience of almost 400 people. Rebecca Kantar won the grand prize for her dedication and efforts to social change reflected in her organization, Minga.
Competition finalists included:
- Mohammed Barry, 19, of the Republic of the Gambia, exemplifies leadership and perseverance. Mohammed lost his father and contracted HIV at the age of seven. He faced enormous discrimination in his community, but turned it into a positive force through the creation of Aid for Smiles—a coalition of global social activists who work toward empowering and mainstreaming marginalized and socially disadvantaged young people. Mohammed was recently nominated for the World Children Peace Prize.
- Shiv Dravid, 24, is the founder and creator of The Viewspaper, a youth journalism website for young people in India. Shiv was inspired to take action when he realized that his own daily experiences were quite different from the observations and discussions amongst media elites. The Viewspaper is seen by more than 150,000 readers a month and publishes daily articles written by youth staff.
- Rocco Falconer, 22, is the founder of Planting Promises, a community-based organization in Sierra Leone that develops the prospects of the world's poorest country by giving local people the opportunity to create sustainable businesses and pursue their education.
- Rebecca Kantar, 18, is a founding member of Minga, a youth-run civic organization dedicated to ending the global child sex trade through educating teens worldwide. Rebecca serves as Minga's director of film media and is a highly accomplished public speaker. She has been named as one of TIME Magazine's Tomorrow25 and is now a freshman at Harvard University.
- Ben Lyon, 24, was inspired to create FrontLineSMS:Credit that is pioneering technology that is connecting microfinance institutions to their borrowers via cell phones in Sierra Leone. Ben has been selected as an "Unreasonable Fellow" by the Unreasonable Institute, which attracts up to 25 high-impact, young social entrepreneurs from across the globe for a ten-week conference.
- Lamia Oezal, 21, founded DeuKische Generation, an organization that focuses on improving the integration of Turkish youth in Germany, after witnessing misperceptions and experiencing discrimination of her Turkish heritage in Germany.
- Seaon Shin, a 19-year-old Korean-American living in Dubai, founded the Global Youth Empowering Movement (GYEM), which links youth together globally allowing for collaboration on service projects.
- Heather Wilder, 17, a Las Vegas teen who is an advocate for the rights of children in foster care through her organization, Fostering Kids at Work. As a foster kid who suffered abuse before being adopted into a loving home at age 12, Heather writes a series of booklets that address issues faced by foster children.
Lessons from the Day
For these social entrepreneurs their youth was the critical ingredient to their successes. The path for each was different, but the ultimate goal of helping others and making a positive impact was the same. We caught up with a few of the finalists to learn what they see as challenges and opportunities for their generation.
Challenges:
Seaon Shin of GYEM noted that one of the biggest obstacles Millennials and younger generations will have to face in the coming years is how they perceive themselves. According to Shin, “too often youth believe that parties, money, and material success” [are what fulfill a person.] We must break through that type of thinking and change the culture.” Instead, Shin and her movement are striving to showcase positive things young people are accomplishing and how that is helping improve out world.
Opportunities:
Falconer of Planting Promises reflected on how technology has helped his program from the very beginning. He noted that the technology “revolution is happening now” and “connectivity” is impacting the productivity levels of individuals around the world. Ultimately, this is a factor that this generation can and should harness. Falconer recounts how very early on in the organization’s development, he used Idealist.org and other online platforms to help him identify the organization’s Director for the Sierra Leon team while he was based in the UK. Embracing the entrepreneurial spirit, Falconer believes that technology can help to “light that fire” for someone and “show people what is possible” to get them engaged.
Falconer, Shin and others definitely lit a spark among listeners that day through their stories. We've heard from these young entrepreneurs and now we want to know what you think the future holds in terms of opportunities and challenges? What inspires you? How can different generations learn from one another and work together to contribute to this growing movement of social entrepreneurship?
Photo of Rebecca Kantar courtesy of Ashoka Youth Venture
- Aid for Smiles
- Ashoka
- Ben Lyon
- DeuKische Generation
- Fostering Kids at Work
- FrontLineSMS:Credit
- Global Youth Empowering Movement
- Heather Wilder
- James Cromwell
- Lamia Oezal
- millennial
- Minga
- Mohammed Barry
- Planting Promises
- Rebecca Kantar
- Rocco Falconer
- Seaon Shin
- Shiv Dravid
- Staples
- TEDxYSE
- The Viewspaper
- Young Social Entrepreneurs
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That’s What Friends are For
Can you ever have too many friends? According to Jimmy Kimmel, the host of ABC’s late night comedy show—yes. The primary vehicle and enabler for this over-friending phenomenon according to Kimmel is Facebook, where an individual’s social network is based on their circle of friends. In an unprecedented effort to restore the “sacred nature of friendship,” Kimmel has declared November 17, 2010, “National UnFriend Day” (NUD). The day is described as an, “international day when all Facebook users… [cut] out any ‘friend fat’ on their pages occupied by people who are not truly their friends.”
“Friend fat?” Really Jimmy? Is there any merit to what Kimmel is trying to do, even if it is delivered through a dose of comedy and satire? Have we gone overboard when it comes to the number of friends we keep on Facebook? Kimmel implores viewers, “Remember five years ago when no one had Facebook and you didn’t know what the guy you took high school biology with was having for lunch? Remember how that was fine? Let’s go back.”
Social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, TenCent and MySpace have indeed forever changed the way we look at, create and maintain relationships. The reality is that these social networks have become an integral part of our culture, so much so that on November 17th I don’t think people will “go back” the way Kimmel hopes, but it is certainly a subject worth of discussion (remember the Burger King defriend promotion).
With Facebook logging more than 500 million active users worldwide, there is reason to believe that people want to continue growing large social networks with hundreds of “friends.” After all, it is human nature to seek interactions with others and to form bonds that define us as a community. It is this community—that lives online—that helps us create our own identity and identify others.
Quality vs. Quantity
Kimmel challenges, "I see people with thousands of what they call [Facebook] 'friends' - which is impossible. You can't have 1,000 friends.” Well actually—yes you can, and it may be easier than you think. Facebook users have on average somewhere around 130 friends, but it’s not too far a leap of the imagination for someone to have many more "friends."
The disconnect I see here is in how we define the word “friend.” Are acquaintances friends? What about colleagues from work who you do not socialize with except for in the office? Are you only friends on Facebook? Where do you draw the line? With the growing popularity of Facebook we’ve seen the word “friend” become a well known verb in popular culture (e.g., friend me when you get home)—a new meaning that only exists today because of Facebook.
Sorry #151, You’re Out of Luck
Despite the immediate laugh-factor in Kimmel’s NUD, perhaps it is worth a closer look. There is a theory commonly referred to as “Dunbar’s Number” that states people can only maintain a certain number of meaningful or “stable” social relationships with others. We've covered this before on Social Citizens and according to Wikipedia, “These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person. Proponents assert that numbers larger than this generally require more restricted rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable, cohesive group. No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar's number, but a commonly cited approximation is 150.”
Professor Robin Dunbar who developed this theory in the 1990’s—well before social networks took hold—explains that “the part of our brain that copes with language, thought and personal interaction will max out when our social circles stretch beyond 150.” The 150 figure has remained the same, regardless of whether the relationships we speak of are in-person, online, in the office or long-distance.
Are Some Relationships “Stronger” than Others?
The debate about strong versus weak online ties is a hot one right now.
Recently, Malcolm Gladwell published a thought-piece in the New York Times about social media’s impact on modern day activism. He expressed that,“The platforms of social media are built around weak ties. Twitter is a way of following (or being followed by) people you may never have met. Facebook is a tool for efficiently managing your acquaintances, for keeping up with the people you would not otherwise be able to stay in touch with. That’s why you can have a thousand ‘friends’ on Facebook, as you never could in real life.”
When it comes to activism according to Gladwell, social media is reinventing social activism, and diluting its impact. "Facebook activism succeeds not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice, but by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice.”
Taking an alternative view, Jacob Morgan of Social Media Today expressed how in today’s society, “weak” ties are actually beneficial. He references Morgan Hansen's book, Collaboration, which suggests that we“build weak ties, not strong ones.”
Hansen argues that, “… weak ties can prove much more helpful in networking, because they form bridges to worlds we do not walk within. Strong ties, on the other hand, tend to be worlds we already know; a good friend often knows many of the same people and things we know. They are not the best when it comes to searching for new jobs, ideas, experts, and knowledge. Weak ties are also good because they take less time. It's less time consuming to talk to someone once a month (weak tie) than twice a week (a strong tie). People can keep up quite a few weak ties without them being a burden.”
Friend or Foe?
What will you do on the 17th? Do you think we should heed Kimmel’s advice and cut out the friend fat? Are you planning to weed out the people who you don’t regularly speak with or embrace weak ties and continue to build a larger network?
I’m of the mindset that you can do both, which is what most of us do anyway—we naturally tend to interact with those people closest to us on a more regular and frequent basis. The way I see it, there’s no harm done in having more friends than not in a platform like Facebook, but I draw the line at friending people who I do not know.
What’s your policy?
Before you go on a friending/unfriending spree, let me leave you with this statement from Facebook representatives that was sent to CBSNews.com in response to NUD, "Jimmy Kimmel's Facebook campaign is clever so we're keeping him on our friend list for now. Come Nov. 17, just remember Jimmy, it's one thing to be the "unfriender," but it's a whole different story if you're the "unfriended." Words to live by in today's online world to be sure. I for one will be checking my Facebook friend list on November 18th!
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