CASE STUDY 3
Examining Power and Privilege for Effective Community Engagement
Client Portrait
This national non-profit is deeply committed to strengthening communities by connecting community members to volunteer opportunities. By partnering with leading community service organizations, they engage 12,000 people each year in direct service projects and ongoing volunteer programs.
Client Challenge
As part of its mission, this organization initiated a yearlong community service fellowship. Now in it’s third year, the fellowship is located in four of the most dynamic post-industrial cities in the United States. The fellows are predominately white, college-educated young adults who serve as volunteers in largely under-resourced urban communities of color.
Given that incoming fellows enter the program with varying levels of experience and knowledge on issues of power and privilege, organizational leadership recognized a need to develop a shared level of understanding of the complex diversity issues that impact the fellows’ work.
What did fellows need to know and understand to thoughtfully engage with local communities and successfully lead programs for diverse audiences on complex issues?
Rally Point’s Solution
Rally Point founding partner, Andrea Jacobs, Ph.D., was contracted to develop and facilitate an experiential workshop on issues of power, privilege and diversity for the fellows in one city. Following this successful workshop, she was hired to develop and facilitate an introductory anti-oppression training that was integrated into the national orientation for new fellows from all four cities.
Drawing on a variety of experiential methods to meet diverse learning styles, the training included
- the examination of how issues of diversity as well as implicit bias impact fellows’ daily interactions with one another and members of the communities they serve;
- real life scenarios as well as research-based frameworks for understanding the dynamics of power, privilege and oppression; and
- a series of exercises and facilitated conversations designed to cultivate a culture of curiosity, compassion, and openness in examining these complex issues.
Benefits & Impacts
These innovative workshops
- established a baseline of shared knowledge and vocabulary for ongoing engagement with complex issues of diversity;
- enhanced fellows’ self-awareness about how their own identities and experiences impact their work as allies to the communities they serve;
- increased fellows’ capacity to engage in conversations about diversity and discrimination;
- supported organizational values and commitment to a culture of lifelong learning; and
- provided national and local staff a clearer sense of additional training needs for fellows.
