WP2- The Effects of an Open-Mindset within Community Engagement
Those involved in service learning need to recognize and realize they are doing something more than working “for” the community. Individuals need to go into community service work with the belief that they are going to make a true long-term positive impact on those they serve. Too many students go into service learning with the thought of “checking off a box” and not with the idea that they are there to create change and instill positive values in those they assist. Most of this is due to the fact that people have preconceived thoughts about those in need, which stop them from fully looking into the problems that have occurred in their lives and the true reason to why they’re in the situation they are in. Therefore, students need to be shown how to properly serve their community in a way that becomes impactful in the future. Many students believe they can go into service learning with the same mindset they’ve had for years; however, I argue that we need to go into our new experiences with an open-mindset, so people in the community get a fair chance to express their story and gain your full acceptance.
Therefore, I believe we need to teach students in the beginning of their community engagement journey, that they can’t go into their service learning experience with preconceived thoughts or ideas. Before I began my experience with WaterDrop LA, I was one of those students who went into volunteering activities to check a box and only do what’s asked of me. I listened to the stereotypes of certain communities and went into my community service with ideas that turned out to be completely different from the reality of the scene. For example, I would volunteer at many food banks and local events in my community, but never truly reflect upon how my service help would make a difference. Walking in downtown Los Angeles to get an overall glimpse of the city and its community helped me better understand that some areas are underserved due to their resources and lack of help they receive from others. Then, talking to the individuals in Skid Row during WaterDrop LA was a complete eye-opening experience because they were all so nice and genuine, while also being respectful. Admittedly, I’ve always associated the homeless with a bad connotation, but after getting to know some of their stories, it completely changed my viewpoint. This makes sense towards my community because I want people to see it in a positive light, instead of people negatively talking about my community and its people. It all comes full circle because I’ve realized that most of the time people are homeless, it’s due to factors that are out of their control. Therefore, my preconceived ideas of the homeless were completely wrong and I’ve now realized that it was unfair to stereotype them in a negative way, because they want their community represented well, just like myself. These ideas are presented clearly in Keith Morton’s article about the differences between service learning models: charity, project, and social change. In “The Irony of Service: Charity, Project and Social Change in Service Learning,” the author includes,“By blaming the victim, the root causes of the problem are ignored” (qtd. in Irony of Service pg. 122). To elaborate, this quote from the piece explains why we can’t go into our experiences with assumptions that stereotypes those who we intend to assist. This is important because our priority is to help those in need to our fullest capabilities, which is unable to happen if we don’t understand the stories that explain why they are in the situation they’re in. Before I had the opportunity to partner with WaterDrop to give homeless people the necessities they needed, I had a belief that all homeless individuals were in such a situation because they messed up. However, I quickly realized this was not the case; I talked to many of these individuals because I wanted to learn more about their story and came to the conclusion that many of them had been put down by uncontrollable burdens. This shows that we, as a unit, need to teach everyone to set aside our differences and truly learn from each other and those in the communities we serve that everyone has a story that deserves to be heard.
To put it another way, having an open-mindset and dropping your biases can open up an entire new perspective on community engagement that can help you reach a whole new level of service learning within your partnership. This can be shown in situations where students believe they are effectively helping those in need, but at the end of the day, their service work is only having a short-term, day-to-day impact. In “Ideal and Real in Service Learning,” Mitchell and Donahue explain the expectations surrounding community service. In the article, they state,“There are expectations that service learning and community engagement experiences respond effectively to community needs…” (Mitchell and Donahue 458). In other words, the authors explain that in many cases, a student’s community service and partnership rarely directly affect that community’s needs. Therefore, in order to better create impactful change, we have to lower our expectations and really draw out a plan in order to better serve our community. All community engagement experiences affect those in a positive manner, but we need to focus on long-term change.
As a result of going into your partnership with an open-mindset, you can create long-term, lasting impacts that go above and beyond the standard of community service. In “The Irony of Service: Charity, Project, and Social Change in Service Learning,” Keith Morton expresses his passion for social change models of community service, in which focus on the original causes to create a long-term impact. He states in the article,“Social change… models typically focus on… creating a learning environment that continually pees away the layers of the onion called root causes” (Morton 122). In this quote, Morton explains that social change models dig deeper into the key issues and come up with ideas that can potentially become a long-term solution for the problems found within one’s experience with service learning. This shows that dropping your preconceived ideas about a certain community can often lead to ideas on how to positively affect those in need, in a way that goes beyond the typical idea of community service. This idea of service learning often causes students to become too concerned with the short-term boosts that come with charity work, instead of getting rewarded for creating social change.
Conversely, some people may believe that doing your research and going in with ideas you learned is the best way to approach community engagement. Although this may be true in some cases, the majority of people will learn better from going into their hands-on experience with an open-mindset and blank slate. This is because no biases will be involved and you can develop better ideas and solutions for the “root causes” of the issue based on your own experience within your service learning partnership. Biases are often involved within community service because many volunteers come from privileged backgrounds, which already creates a vast difference between the people in the community you’re serving and yourself.
To put it all together, I’ve expressed my beliefs to why people need to go into their community engagement opportunities broad-minded and open to suggestions, because it further allows you to immerse yourself into their “shoes”. Going into service learning unbiased will result in you creating long-term impacts in your community by building relationships and focusing on problem-solving ideas that will ultimately create social change, as talked about in Morton’s article. The most important aspect of service learning is coming together and brainstorming ideas that can lead to long-term solutions to the crises that individuals are facing in your community.
Works Cited
Morton, Keith. “The Irony of Service: Charity, Project, and Social Change in Service-Learning.” Writing and Community Engagement: A Critical Sourcebook, edited by Thomas Deans, Barbara Roswell, and Adrian J. Wurr, 2010, pp. 117–135
Mitchell, Tania and Donahue, David. “Ideal and Real in Service Learning.” Transforming The Ideal Based On The Real, pp. 458–467
