Learning from and with Community Organizations to Navigate the Tensions of Democratic Engagement

Abstract

In his 2015 framing essay for the Service-Learning & Community Engagement Future Directions Project (SLCE-FDP), Edward Zlotkowski challenges the movement to think carefully about "where we locate the center of our efforts" (p. 84) and reconsiders whether the focus on academic legitimacy and institutional transformation he called for in his 1995 essay "Does Service-Learning Have a Future?" ought still to be the priority 20 years later. He also commends several of the 2015 SLCE-FDP thought pieces for calling attention to "voices often unrepresented or underrepresented" (p. 84). In this essay, we try to further deepen the role of community members and organizations in the movement's efforts to understand and address the opportunities and challenges of the present and future. Specifically, we call on our campus-based colleagues to seek out and learn from examples of community organizations that, in their day-to-day work, enact the principles of democratic engagement; and we call on our community-based colleagues to share and critique their own efforts. We envision the future of SLCE as bringing to life the commitments of democratic engagement and thereby nurturing shared responsibility for and shared power in nudging the world toward peace and justice. And we believe the SLCE movement as a whole can learn much from what may prove to be more democratic and cutting edge approaches in the broader community than are often found in the academy. We have first-hand experience as leaders, staff, partners, and volunteers with community organizations that work diligently to achieve democratic ends through democratic means in social and cultural contexts that make doing so difficult. We find in candid examination of two of our organizations' efforts some illumination of the tensions associated with democratic engagement: asset-oriented norms and co-creation (as they occur within the Interactive Resource Center, described below by Kathleen) and place-based partnerships and a process orientation toward impact (as they occur within ioby, described below by Brandon). We offer these examples not as success stories full of lessons learned and words of wisdom but rather as demonstrations of both challenges and possibilities--attempting in this way to shine light on the complexities of democratic engagement as experienced in communities. Interactive Resource Center The Interactive Resource Center (IRC, hup://gsodaycenter.org/) in Greensboro, North Carolina, is a daytime center for people experiencing homelessness. The IRC's mission is to "assist people who are homeless, recently homeless, or facing homelessness [in reconnecting] with their own lives and with the community at large." We offer practical services: laundry, showers, access to computers and Internet, case management, and referrals. We also partner with other nonprofits and grassroots organizations, sharing our space as an incubator for multiple services and activities (e.g., medical services, art therapy, gardening, transportation via refurbished bicycles, GED courses, and weekly community vegetarian dinners). The following analysis of the IRC's efforts to enact an asset-based orientation and co-creation is based on a snapshot of the organization from 2010-2014, a period that most honestly reflects the aspirations relevant to this thought piece. At its inception, the people designing the IRC--many of whom were experiencing homelessness at the time--intentionally adopted an asset orientation: peer-based, strengths-focused, and collaborative. As we say every day in our morning meeting: "This is the Interactive Resource Center. Your best resource is each other." Our intention is for everyone affiliated with the organization to experience it as their community. The term "guest" displaces the term "client"--the common social service agency name for a person accessing services--because we believe it better establishes a respectful space and affirms non-hierarchical, multi-directional relationships. …