Tag Archives: privilege & poverty

Conflict Transformation Spotlight: CCE Updates from 2022

Middlebury’s Center for Careers and Internship Students pictured with United States Senator Bernie Sanders in Washington, D.C.

This blog post draws from the remarks of Kailee Brickner-McDonald, Interim Director at the Center for Community Engagement, which were shared at the 2022 Clifford Symposium staff and faculty panel.

In September 2022, Middlebury College hosted the annual Clifford Symposium. This year, the Symposium focused on conflict transformation and the myriad ways Middlebury faculty, staff, and students address conflict at home and around the world. The keynote speaker at the Clifford Symposium was John Paul Lederach, Professor Emeritus of International Peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame. Author of 22 books, including “The Little Book of Conflict Transformation,” and with experience designing and conducting training programs in 25 countries across five continents, Lederach is known for pioneering conflict transformation work, illustrating conflict transformation requires “both solutions and social change.”

Fourteen CCE students funded through the Conflict Transformation Collaborative presented at the student poster session on how their community engagement activities fall within conflict transformation. The Clifford Symposium also included a panel in which Middlebury faculty and staff shared experiential opportunities for Middlebury students to explore conflict transformation across the institution. As a panelist, Kailee Brickner-McDonald explained why the CCE’s mission focuses on providing community-based experiences to students: “Community-based experiences allow relationships and critical moments to emerge into spaces we can consider more expansive questions, social context, and complexity. The Conflict Transformation lens encourages us to build programs and relationships with more intention and support to make the most of those inevitable, challenging, messy spaces.”

Conflict transformation work with communities encourages students to expect and embrace the tensions that arise while working towards a collaborative solution. “This collaborative work,” Kailee said, “prepares students for lives of meaning and impact through community connection.” She outlined how the hopes of the Conflict Transformation Collaborative align well with the CCE’s mission for students to develop their civic knowledge, skills, and identities. Through their connections in communities, students can explore curiosities in three areas:

  1. Civic Identities: How do I contribute to conflict and peace? What are my responsibilities to and choices in my communities? How do my values and experiences drive my personal engagement?
  2. Civic Knowledge: How do I critique the situation from multiple lenses and perspectives? Do I understand the role of power and justice? What resources already exist in the community?
  3. Civic Skills: How can I practice cultural humility in interpersonal communication? How do I approach dialogue across differences? In what ways can I facilitate collaborative relationships? 

In each of these areas, what starts as a tidy-sounding, community-connected experience gets complicated by collaboration, gets real because of relationships, and gets instructive because of inquiry. The conflict transformation lens says to expect and embrace the tensions that arise from working on complex issues among different people and approach them as gifts– spaces where change can happen. Experiential learning opportunities embedded in community building activities offer:

  • Growth points in students’ development of their civic knowledge: students learn to critique their situations from multiple lenses and perspectives; students build their understanding of the role of power and justice
  • Places to apply skills that require practice: students practice cultural humility in interpersonal communication and try out dialogue across differences; students have a chance to facilitate collaborative relationships
  • Sparks that guide students to explore their Identities: students get to ask critical questions like: “How do I contribute to conflict and peace? What are my responsibilities, choices, and positionality in my communities? What do I still need to learn?”

On the panel, Kailee provided several examples of this work, including one from the CCE’s 2022 History in Translation trip:

Students participating in the History in Translation program (Experiential and Intercultural Exploration of Executive Order 9066) visited a “War Relocation Center” for Japanese Americans in World War II. “There they learned the language they’ve grown up using (like “internment camps”) is harmful and sanitizing– to their guide at the incarceration site who’s giving them a tour, and others.”

How did History in Translation explore this conflict on their trip?

CCE staff member Kristin Mullins, Assistant Director of Intercultural and Global Programs, worked with colleagues to bring students from Middlebury College and International Christian University in Mitaka, Japan, together for shared exploration, reflection, and conversation on this piece of US history. Despite the differences in geography, culture, and identities, all participants reflected on who they are and why certain language matters to them. Everyone learned something different about the far-from-homogeneous movement to recognize the impacts of Executive Order 9066 and the nuances and evolution of language choices and memory of the conflicts. Check out the program’s website to see how their work evolved– it captures the documents they collaboratively translated, photos from the experience, and reflections on their learning: History in Translation – Learning through translation (middcreate.net).

The CCE’s work explores conflict not just through topical exploration of current and historical conflicts but also in interpersonal dynamics embedded in all relational programs. Kailee provided another example working with two student leaders of an alternative break program at Middlebury:

The co-leaders/friends were preparing for an environmental justice-themed trip, but after one felt like her voice didn’t matter in their decision-making, their friendship started to erode, and one considered leaving the team. CCE staff worked with them to navigate their interpersonal conflict, support collaboration, and create a positive and affirming space for both students. As Kailee put it, “The collaborative, relational aspect of community engagement work–in this case, the co-creation of a logistically-heavy, team-based learning experience–created a hurdle, and a chance for these students to practice the appreciative inquiry, listening, and participatory decision-making skills they gained in their leadership training and discussed in staff advising conversations, to try out navigating interpersonal conflict in a new, restorative way.”

The CCE’s programs, reflective and inquiring spaces, and interpersonal dynamics contribute to how we address conflict transformation here at home and abroad. Kailee provided one last example to demonstrate how conflict transformation shows up in our work with students who are engaging with various communities:

A student in a Privilege & Poverty summer internship was working with a community organization that addresses housing access. After multiple experiences seeing clients return to the shelter due to factors beyond which the organization can support, the student zooms out to question the policy choices and social constructions that make houselessness a possibility in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. They bring these questions back to their internship cohort gathering and, through reflective conversation, realize they’re not alone in questioning the adequacy of direct service and their role in social change. Students begin to marvel at the interconnectedness of their work across different social services organizations and begin to identify how much they don’t know that they want and need to know, with an eye to the next semester’s course catalog. Students also build connections and develop mentors at their internship sites, allowing them to connect with others about how they’re sustained in doing this challenging, necessary work.


In closing, Kailee remarked, “Working with students to develop their civic knowledge, skills, and identities certainly leads to personal change, but that change also translates into how students engage as humans strengthening communities and contributing to the public good– at the personal, interpersonal, local/community, and national/global levels.”

The CCE is excited to be involved in this challenging and far-reaching work alongside other partners at Middlebury and to see how our work with communities grows and develops throughout the Conflict Transformation grant. For more information on the Conflict Transformation Collaborative, visit the Conflict Transformation website and Instagram.

Rural Fun Delivery: My Local Privilege & Poverty Internship, by Claiborne Beary ’20

Claiborne Beary ‘20 reflects on her experiences as an Addison County Privilege & Poverty Intern with Mary Johnson Children’s Center as their Rural Fun Delivery Program Manager

Rural Fun Delivery (RFD), a Mary Johnson Children’s Center program, provides free, healthy lunches and engaging summer programming to kids 18 and under in mobile home parks in Starksboro, Vermont. Last summer, RFD expanded to offer afternoon activities on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays and provided each site with a Little Free Library full of books donated by local non-profits. Eight weeks into my internship, I am thrilled to be a part of RFD’s fifth summer delivering food and fun to the kiddos in Starksboro.

I began my internship with RFD by planning activities for the summer and preparing promotional materials with my co-lead intern Lily Barter ’19.5, in addition to helping out with the Mary Johnson Children’s Center’s after-school program at Middlebury’s Mary Hogan Elementary School. Having served with Middlebury College’s Page One Literacy Project, I was especially excited to build on the existing Little Free Libraries and offer a new summer reading challenge to help foster a love of reading.

We began delivering lunches – prepared by the Mt. Abraham Union School District – three weeks into my internship and centered that week’s activities around community. That included playing blob tag and creating a collaborative poster! We have since traveled through space, explored nature, and transformed into superheroes. This is currently our fifth week and we are going under the sea by learning the classic game Captain’s Coming, creating slime, and perfecting our water balloon toss. I have greatly enjoyed building relationships with the kids so far – getting insider knowledge about all the animatronics in the video game Five Nights at Freddy’s, meeting a fantastic group of stuffed animals, and discussing our favorite superhero movies.

I look forward to drawing from my experience with RFD in my work with Middlebury’s Page One Literacy program and in future non-profit work with kids. I am so grateful to Anne Gleason, Director of School Age Programs at Mary Johnson, for this opportunity and to Lily for her creativity and enthusiasm.

“These interactions have really helped me understand the power of providing a safe space for kids to be kids.”

A Shepherd Intern on Her Experience and the Future

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My name is Nora O’Leary and this summer I am working at HOPE, a non-profit organization that provides food, clothing, and resources to low-income and homeless families in Addison County. HOPE has a food shelf, which is available to families once a month, and a surplus area stocked with day-old food from Hannaford’s supermarket and other generous locals. The organization earns money from sales at their thrift shop, Retroworks, which they use to aid families with a variety of expenses, from heating bills, to laundry vouchers, to car repairs. HOPE also provides assistance to homeless individuals with basic necessities, camping supplies, and with the difficult transition out of homelessness. Because HOPE is not a government-affiliated organization, the staff is able to be flexible and provide financial assistance based on a person’s needs at any given time rather than following strict guidelines. That means there is a lot of personal interaction with the clients, because the staff seeks to hear everyone’s stories and understand their struggles, in order to help them in the most effective way possible. As HOPE’s receptionist this summer, I have had the opportunity to have the initial contact with every client who walks in the door, hear their stories, and figure out how best to help them.

Coming into this summer, I wasn’t sure how this internship would relate to my (hopefully) future career as an elementary school teacher. However, I’ve found myself thinking about how closely related the cycle of poverty and education really are. Many clients that HOPE works with struggle with obesity, or drug addictions, have been incarcerated, or have never finished high school. These problems are ones that people are often harshly judged for in our society, because they all involve making some poor choices along the way. However, more and more I have thought about the young child within each of those clients who comes in. Who taught that child about nutrition, or warned them against drug use, or encouraged them to release frustration in healthy, non-violent ways? What about the child who quit school to start working and help his parents pay to keep the heating on in the winter? Many of the clients who come into HOPE everyday never had someone to teach them important lessons about finances and managing money, or a positive role model whose example they could follow in life. A teacher can be a hugely positive influence on a child, and this job has made me so eager to be that for a child someday. I continue to think about how a client’s life might have been different had they someone who believed in them, and encouraged them to work their hardest in and out of school everyday. I am hugely grateful for so many things this summer has taught me, but motivating me to continue on my way to becoming a public school teacher is an unforeseen and wonderful outcome

Nora O’Leary, ’17

To Have Patients

13584911_10154290273964253_2364320571155775360_oWith the Open Door Clinic, I have become aware of a whole new community that exists in Addison County of which I was not previously aware. In Addison County, roughly half of residents are uninsured. While most of us can go into a hospital and show an insurance card to avoid heavy fees, many Vermonters are left staring down big hospital bills with very little means through which to pay them. However, the issue is not even this simple. For migrant workers in Vermont, many do not understand the system and, when they receive their bills, do not quite know what to do with them since they are not in their native language. This is just one issue that I have been confronted with and helped alleviate through proactive communications with patients. While these problems are large scale, and will therefore need solutions on such a scale, I can still feel that my contribution has been worthwhile: helping a migrant worker, who provides for his small family that he started in Vermont, get his bills paid can be an experience that would be far more significant than one had serving my superiors coffee as an intern on Wall Street.
In the future, I see myself doing work that will help people, not because of their economic or social advantages but because we owe people help because of their humanity. At the Open Door Clinic, my coworkers have been consummate professionals in refraining from judging patients. In this line of work, we must become pure assets that always work for the benefit of our patients. In this sense, the job becomes all the more fulfilling through intentional service in which we deny ourselves our own wishes. This type of job has been very fulfilling for me and my coworkers have been role models for me to teach what it means to serve those that are marginalized in our communities.
– JJ Moser ‘16.5

What Happens When 50+ MiddKids Go on MAlt Trips

This past February break, six groups of Middlebury students escaped the wintry Vermont weather, traveling as many as 3,000 miles to six respective locations around the globe. Middlebury Alternative Break Trips, affectionately referred to as MAlt trips, are service-oriented experiential-learning trips. This year the 50+ MAlt participants traveled to Guatemala, Washington DC, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Miami, and New York City, and addressed issues ranging from permaculture to privilege and poverty in vastly diverse local communities.

“The trip was eye-opening and life-changing […] I intend to try to lead a MAlt trip myself, motivated by how powerful and influential and rewarding this trip has been,” one MAlt Washington DC participant said.

Returning to campus, many students remarked that their MAlt trip has left an enduring mark on them.

Another student who participated in the Building Communities trip in Guatemala, working with Constru Casa and Tecnologia Para Salud (TPS), noted that “[…] it was more than I ever imagined and will have lasting impact on me. It taught me the power of active learning. Moreover, it taught me that it is not enough to be ‘book smart’.”

As students reflected on their rich experiences and personal growth, they also explored the ethics of service and development work. What role does service play in a community? How can we responsibly contribute to a community that is not our own? What is sustainable service and development? How can we unpack our own privilege in relation to certain communities based on identities of race, class, gender, nationality, ethnicity, sexuality, and so on? How can we best learn from each other?

Read on: MAlt participants will answer these questions, explain the ins and outs of travel in-country and abroad, talk small group dynamics and new friendships, and tell of the challenges and lasting benefits of volunteerism and service.

Over the course of their trips these Middkids kept quite busy. Elsa Avarado ’18 of MAlt Miami, a group that worked at a schools, wrote in, “Some of the projects that we did for the school included: spreading wood chips all over the playground, re-planting the garden, etc. Our days were very packed.”

Dylan Gilbert and Mariam Khan, both class of 2017, wrote about their trip to Mexico and the opportunity it afforded an unlikely group of students to get to know each other. Dylan Gilbert is an Art History and Russian double major from St. Peters, Missouri and Mariam Khan is a student of Math, Religion, and Education Studies from Waterville, Maine.

They wrote, “MAlt trips really have the ability to bring together a variety of students from across campus that would most likely never intersect otherwise. Our trip was no different. We had an extremely diverse group of 12 students (including us). Every class year was represented. Majors ranged from Physics to Art History to Women and Gender Studies to Math, and even geographically our participants came from all over the United States and even the world. All of our participants were exceptional individuals that each contributed their own unique perspective and experiences to the group dynamic.”

Dylan, Mariam, and other MAlt Mexico participants also reflected upon certain challenges that the group faced, from linguistic capabilities to the politics of international tourism.

“In addition to working with children at the daycare, our group also explored issues of inequality and poverty in San Miguel de Allende, a town known for its expat communities and tourism. Our goal was the offer a caring hand to Casa and a critical eye to privilege as we engaged in our work at the center […] Not everyone on our trip knew Spanish, which was challenging but encouraging since everyone was still able to engage equally […] The town of San Miguel itself has a problematic history with tourism and expats, and through this trip, we were able to observe and analyze the complex nature of the community while still recognizing our own role in the broader narrative of San Miguel. Overall, our experiences in San Miguel de Allende provided able opportunity to physically engage with our work and each other and also to better understand the effects of tourism on the local populations of San Miguel.”

Similar to the reflections of MAlt Mexico participants, a MAlt Puerto Rico participant noted that, “This trip was useful in informing me on culturally-appropriate service abroad.” This learning, however, certainly came with challenges, even if small ones. On the MAlt Miami trip, for instance, showering at night in an outdoor shower and staying in a low-income neighborhood posed an adjustment for some of the participants.

As far as community partners goes, the reviews of the Middkids were extremely positive. Jessica Towers of DC Central Kitchen worked with the Washington DC trip focusing on issues of privilege and poverty. She said, “The Middlebury students that came to work with us were awesome! They were friendly, helpful, and hardworking.” Community partner Cale Johnson of Casa de los Angeles, a non-profit in Mexico that provides a safe haven for single mothers and their children, writes, “We were really pleased and impressed with all of the students in the group. They came willing and enthusiastic to help and as such left a great impact on our organization.”

The students in turn expressed their appreciation for the community partners and organizations with whom they worked. MAlt Miami wrote in, “I would most definitely recommend ICO to other MAlt leaders because they truly made us feel welcome and they were so grateful for our help. Even though we were so grateful to be part of the team!” MAlt Puerto Rico also chimed in, “Working with Plenitud was a very symbiotic relationship.”

Indeed, many trip-goers said they would recommend the organizations they worked with to future MAlt participants. Despite the challenges they encountered, participants found that they made a difference in and learned from the communities they served thanks to moments of reflection, communication, and hard work. In the words of one MAlt Guatemala participant, “Service is possible by team work and willingness to learn.”

So, what do you say? Will you be next? Will a life-changing MAlt trip be part of your 2016 or 2017?

Learn more about Middlebury Alternative Break Trips at go/malt and view photos from this year’s trips on Facebook.

 

~Alison Haas ’16, CE Communications Intern