Reshaping Equity and Justice
Amos Jaimes
Before I started the Creative Reaction Lab Seeds of Power (SOP) Fellowship Program, I thought I knew everything about equity and justice. I felt that I was an expert and that this fellowship would be reinforcing what I already knew. The SOP fellowship pushed me to rethink how I viewed the pursuit of equity and justice in my community.
During the program, I have been challenged to think critically by using the Equity-Centered Community DesignTM (ECCD) framework. ECCD creates a roadmap and guides through every step of the design process. Throughout the design process the focus is on community and uplift their voices in the process of community co-creation.
Through this work with Creative Reaction Lab, I have learned to center the activism happening in my own community. Growing up, I heard of faraway cities and the youth activism that was happening there. This always made me feel that the midwest was doing nothing in this regard but, through my research, I have found the opposite to be true.
While working on my fellowship project, I dug deep into the application of the ECCD process. My fellowship project centers student activism and youth voices, as captured by accessible blog posts. Ultimately, I plan to collaborate with community members to expand the platform and make it a resource that serves their specific needs.
This -collaboration has to be intentional with every part of my project. To display this, I have changed the name of the website to “Our Story”. This is to show the community that it is work that needs to happen together. I aim to gather input from teachers and students to create a website that captures what they would want. The work and research conducted is accessible to all through my website. This is vital to giving back to the communities I am actively learning from and making sure I am not setting up information behind barriers. Throughout the process, I incorporated using Missouri State Social Studies standards to ensure that the lesson plans could be applied to a teacher’s classroom.
My website will encourage students to dig deeper into the equity of their surroundings and how past work of student activism can and has impacted their current world. This focus also allows students to center their own city, rather than learning about the activism of other students in different cities. Now students can see the work of their past ancestors and they will see that they too can make a change in their community.
