Community Engagement: Share Your Stories!

I've been writing for Poverty in America for a month or two now, so as a means of introducing myself, I'd like to discuss a subject that I find essential and invaluable: community engagement.

My love affair with community engagement didn't begin until my last year of college; you could call me a "late bloomer." I was actually required to volunteer at a disadvantaged high school in Oakland for a class on literacy; each week, I'd drive or take public transportation to the school and help students write and record their own hip hop music (not that I could do too much "helping" -- the kids knew way more than I did).

Even though Berkeley has its fair share of racial and economic diversity, never before had I spent much consistent time with people whose life backgrounds were much different from my own. Daily, I wrestled with the power dynamics that my race and economic standing created in the classroom, with my position of privilege, with my "white guilt" -- and my guilt over feeling "white guilt." In what seemed like a cliche movie, I listened to stories from students about family members being shot and cops racially profiling classmates.

But I also encountered stories of parents cracking down on their kids and demanding good grades, often at the expense of cell phone and TV privileges. I spoke often with a mother who led the after-school tutoring program, primarily to keep an eye on her academically-struggling son. By the time the literacy course I was taking ended in December, my perception of economically disadvantaged communities in Oakland had radically expanded and evolved, and I'd only spent four months with a handful of kids.

The following semester, I stepped my engagement efforts up a notch, joining with a UC Berkeley professor to develop a "service learning" course for my department. The idea was simple: students would learn theory in class and then implement it on the ground in local nonprofits (after all, what's the point in learning something if you're not going to use it?). Since I was also taking the service learning class, I had to choose an organization myself. I picked Berkeley Youth Alternatives (BYA), a small but thriving after-school center for low-income kids from the East Bay. A few times a week, I dropped by BYA in the afternoons, parsing through books with students, tossing footballs, goofing around on the jungle gym, and eating dinner in the cafeteria. It was at BYA that I met Meiya, an energetic 11-year-old with a hearty laugh and a creative streak (to help me remember her name, she drew me a diagram -- a picture of her ("ME"), an eye ("I"), and the letter "A"). We became fast friends; to this day, we still exchange frequent emails.

I won't go into more detail about my experiences. They're pretty standard: volunteered, met people I'd never have known otherwise, learned more about myself than I could have anticipated. But standard as it may sound, that's the heart of community engagement. As we proactively connect with our towns and our cities, we rapidly come to understand our roles in creating and reinforcing social structures. We step outside our fragile bubbles of comfort and expose ourselves to the harsh but necessary light of criticism, of confrontation, of difference. And through all this, we grow.

I'm still in the process of growing -- we all are. And part of that process is seeking out and absorbing other people's life lessons. With that in mind, what are your stories about community engagement? Where have you worked, volunteered, or been a client? Who have you met? And most importantly, what have you learned?

Photo credit: CarbonNYC