We apply the philosophy and skills of the community organizing model, such as identifying self-interest, building relationships, understanding root causes, restructuring power, and centering the experience of the communities most impacted by injustice and systemic oppression, to inform how we build partnerships for community engagement.
We value the principles and elements of Emergent Strategy in our quest to fulfill our vision of collaborating with communities to improve lives
Emergent Strategy provides a way of approaching our work with a set of skills and strategies “for organizers building movements for justice and liberation that leverage relatively simple interactions to create complex patterns, systems, and transformations – including adaptation, interdependence and decentralization, fractal awareness, resilience and transformative justice, nonlinear and iterative change, creating more possibilities.”
Why Engage with CCESL Student Programs?
All CCESL Student Programs expose students to these concepts. Programs focus on various levels of depth and complexity from awareness and knowledge, to skill development, to application through action, then application through integration across experiences/programs/activities, and finally adaptation, moving beyond your own project and contributing to our shared understanding. The aim is to build students’ knowledge, skills, and commitments over time.
CCESL’s Four Pathways to Community-Engaged Knowledge, Skills, & Commitments
We employ a set of knowledge, skills, and commitments through our student programs that are aligned with this approach. We believe that students’ capacity to do authentic, ethical community-engaged work is enhanced when they Think, Connect, Act, Reflect.
Democratic engagement is the practice of engaged citizenship; engaging in politics and political processes such as voting, engaging in dialogue and deliberation, discerning credible information, and familiarity with how government, legislation, and policy work. Civic engagement is the process of applying your knowledge, skills, and commitments to public life, working collaboratively to solve public problems (whether through political or non-political processes).
Including exercising critical self-awareness of one’s identities, privilege, and the Four I's of Oppression, while engaging in constant critical reflection, centering the knowledge and voices of frontline communities, and actively working against white supremacy.
Emergent Strategy is to practice “being in right relationship to our home and each other . . . how we intentionally change in ways that grow our capacity to embody the just and liberated worlds we long for.” To embrace Emergent Strategy is to let its principles guide your approach to social change work, which are:
Change is constant (Be like water)
There is always enough time for the right work
There is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have, find it
Never a failure, always a lesson
Trust the People. (If you trust the people, they become trustworthy)
Move at the speed of trust. Focus on critical connections more than critical mass – build the resilience by building the relationships
This can be achieved by engaging in civic professionalism and understanding how you can orient your professional life and work in ways that contribute to creating a just and equitable society. Understand your strengths and how you can bring them to public good work. What do you bring to the work? Where are you naturally inclined to go? How do your strengths and talents intersect with what you care about? From there, determine what you can do to work toward the change you seek.
