Making Impacts: The End
After a gruelling 2 years and 4 semesters, the end is in sight. Across the many courses that I have taken during my time at Munk, PPG2012 was undoubtedly the best course.
Learning about policy from a theoretical and abstract lens is great until you wind up in an internship position and realize that so much of what you had learned was irrelevant, overly simplistic, or simply not helpful. The policy process is vast and all-encompassing, spilling over from the private and public spheres but, learning about this only really came through in Making an Impact from the Outside.
The hands-on approach to learning was refreshing considering the predominantly online approach to learning that had to take place due to the pandemic. But, more than facilitating learning outside of the classroom, field trips were a chance to see policy in action from somewhere other than a desk. The human experience within the policy process was so lost on me prior to this class. I had taken on quite a pessimistic view of what I was doing in my career and the policy realm more generally.
But, this class changed that perspective.
Often, the fruits of community organizing are seen after much time has passed. The energy and resources that go into fighting the “good fight” are lost on those that are outside of the immediate community organizing space and it can be very discouraging to learn and hear about how long minuscule movements took, with such a great deal of effort.
But, meeting with all of the people this class connected us with, hearing their stories, and learning about the process of making an impact was an incredibly eye-opening experience and reaffirmed the positive side of policymaking and implementation that had been so lost on me throughout this program. There were a lot of firsts that this course gave me the opportunity to experience: my first construction site visit, first BIPOC-centred bookstore visit, first laneway suite tour, and first face-to-face conversation with a city councillor.
The broadness of the policy realm was never lost on me. The government apparatus is vast, with many moving parts that need to collaborate for policies to be created, implemented, and evaluated. But, the microcosmic policy realm within cities is incredibly fascinating. Federal-level policies always felt general, even in the way we would talk about them, and part of that makes sense given that they are designed to reach large groups of people. Only delving into these policies, though, as we often did, creates a sort of distance — an impersonal space.
As a result, the personal nature of public policy gets lost in translation and the meaningfulness of the field more generally seems to diminish. But, this course aptly put a spotlight on making an impact from the outside and changed how I thought about public policy.
What makes public policy “public” isn’t necessarily its broader application to the public, handed down from a government structure. It is public in the sense that while it does permeate everything within society, it is ultimately made by, for, and with the public. Seeing the non-governmental side of the policy process was exciting and provided the kind of optimism I needed to feel “good/right” about being in a field that I was hesitant about.
Perhaps the most validating conversation I had during this course was with Luke Anderson who had moved me to think about the value of personal stories. “In the absence of statistics, testimonials can be a powerful tool.” Knowing that someone in the policy realm really believed in the power of stories reinvigorated my ideas about the personal nature of public policy and the need to make it personal because . . . it is.
