Doing Good While Bridging the College-Community Gap

This is part 5 of an 11-part series on Undergraduate Social Entrepreneurship coordinated by the Social Innovation Initiative at Brown University. This post's author is Rachel Levenson, Chief Coordinator of BRYTE.

In nonprofit work, it's often the "Wouldn't it be great if...?" questions that propel development and change. As I've had a chance to learn firsthand, among college students, the combination of enthusiasm and naiveté creates an environment particularly conducive for such questions.

During the fall of my junior year at Brown, I began to coordinate Brown Refugee Youth Tutoring and Enrichment (BRYTE). As the young, ambitious leader of a young, ambitious organization, I had ideas coming out of my ears about directions for the group, and particularly about ways in which I could leverage my status as a student to best serve Providence's refugee community.

BRYTE, a student-led, weekly in-home refugee tutoring and mentoring organization, works in partnership with the International Institute of Rhode Island, the primary refugee resettlement organization in the state. Formed in the fall of 2006 by a Brown student who spent her summer working at the International Institute, as an organization, BRYTE began with close ties to its community partner. Early on, its founder, for example, met with staff at the Institute on a weekly basis to monitor the development of BRYTE.

But by the time I assumed leadership two years later, ties between BRYTE leadership and the Institute had weakened.

There were no longer weekly meetings, and turnover at both the International Institute and among Brown students resulted in a gaping communication hole between the two organizations.

So, as a new leader, my "Wouldn't it be great" questions didn't manage to take into account the work already being done by the International Institute. For example, after hearing reports from volunteers about the difficulties refugee parents had in identifying and paying bills sent to their homes, I asked: "Wouldn't it be great if BRYTE provided financial literacy training?"

To address this question, another student and I pitched a plan to several staff members of the International Institute's Refugee Resettlement department. The idea was kindly shot down. They told me that the Institute already works closely with each family on financial literacy, and that the best thing that BRYTE could offer with their goals was to help with English language and literacy.

It'd be easy to dismiss this incident as simply the mistake of a young leader. But I think it's a symptom of a larger problem: a lack of coordination and mutual accountability between student leaders and groups, and their community partners.

With that in mind, here are two of the greatest goals I've found as necessary in trying to straddle that communication gap:

1) Recognize the limitations of students doing community work.

Last summer, during a conversation with several staff members at the International Institute, I was surprised to learn that Brown students do not have a great reputation for the work they do in Providence. "Brown students come down from their campus and think they can do everything better than us," one co-worker told me.

While this particular group of staff members may have been particularly frustrated, their criticism, and my surprise, points to a lack of sensitivity of students about the impact of their presence and their work on community members, particularly on community partners.

Students, after all, are a transient bunch. While college may be a four-year experience, not all of the four years are spent on campus. Between winter and summer vacation and shorter breaks during the semesters, students are in the town or city of their college for less than eight months a year.

What's more, students don't always know what's best, and need to recognize that. Particularly for people doing community work where interpersonal relations are critical, students can't develop interpersonal connections in a day. And reading theories of change is very different from helping enable actions that promote change.

2) Create value for your organization.

First: communicate with your partners, often. Make meetings, go to staff meetings, email and call -- let partners know what the students are putting into the work they do. After a summer working at the Institute, I still attend meetings and stop by the building as often as possible. I am also in weekly contact with staff. Second: identify successes and plans for the future. BRYTE provides the Institute with progress reports for each volunteer's work. A staff member at the Institute then reads those reports and responds. These reports not only provide the Institute with volunteer hours, but also are weekly evidence of the impact of BRYTE's work. Likewise, last summer I designed a BRYTE/International Institute Internship, while this fall, one BRYTE leader in training is working at the Institute two days a week.

Third: involve the community partner in work being done. Recently, BRYTE organized a Thanksgiving meal for the BRYTE families and invited the entire staff of the Refugee Resettlement department. While this was an event primarily for the refugees in the program, involvement of Institute staff helped to support a growing community built among Brown students and Institute staff, as well as other community members.

By creating their own individual value, students are in turn more able to hold their community partner accountable for the work they do. Such mutual accountability -- based on respect and knowledge for what each partner is doing -- can help both students and their community partners effectively leverage each of their respective resources. For young social entrepreneurs, then, my question is: "Wouldn't it be great if you established a partnership where you value your community partner's work and they valued yours?"

Photo Credit: Brandon Godfrey