Tag: SESEC

A different kind of retreat

Posted on by Vu

tomatoes

Hi everyone. I just joined Twitter. I have 9 followers. Is that a lot? I don’t know. If you want to follow, it’s @nonprofitwballs #confused #stilldontunderstandhashtags. On to this week’s post:

Over the weekend the Southeast Seattle Education Coalition (SESEC) had our retreat. Whenever we have a major event, I tend to freak out, believing that all sorts of things will go wrong. I get night terrors, waking up in cold sweats screaming, “We gave people the wrong address! The zombies are coming!” (I should probably refrain from watching TV when I’m stressed out).

OK, first some background. Southeast Seattle is home to the most diverse zip code in the nation, 98118, which means ridiculously delicious ethnic foods. Unfortunately 98118 is also home to some of the most struggling schools. Seattle Public Schools District grades its schools from 1 to 5, based on absolute scores on tests as well as how fast they’re improving, with 5 being highest in terms of achievement. Of the 20 schools in SE Seattle, only one school is above a level 3, despite some of the most amazing and dedicated educators working here.

SESEC was formed for a couple of reasons. First, education reform in Seattle has been really contentious, with people blaming each other and throwing rocks. Reading comments on any article on education is like peering into the darkest recesses of the human souls. The tension is everywhere. I’ve seen friends literally get into fist fights at the Farmer’s Market, arguing about charter schools. OK, not literally, but there definitely was vigorous head shaking and vague threats of squishing the other person’s organic heirloom tomatoes. SESEC believes instead of fighting about stuff we don’t agree on and threatening to damage prized organic produce, why don’t we work on stuff we can agree to, like parental engagement and extended learning programs.

Another reason we were formed is that while in Washington State we have many efforts to improve schools, communities of color are not well represented. It is alarming and a symptom of a not-quite-effective system when the “achievement and opportunity gap” most impacts kids of color, and yet the communities of color are barely there at these tables that are making major policy recommendations. We communities of color in SE Seattle must be in the front leading and painting a vision where all kids are successful. “All Fives in Five,” we say, our campaign slogan to push for all schools down here to become a Level 5 school within 5 years. And we believe we can get there if we all work together.

A year later, we now have about 50 organizations and schools working in collaboration, one of the most diverse coalitions in the State. That’s why we had to have the retreat, to prioritize our goals and develop an action plan, and why I bolted up in bed screaming, “Pork sandwiches?! Nooooooooo!!” (With so much diversity, having culturally appropriate food is very important).

On the day of, I had gotten up early so that I had extra time to freak out. I was worried that people wouldn’t show up, or they couldn’t find the place, or the babysitters we recruited would flake out and the children in the childcare room would escape and run amok, or that people would find the retreat useless, or that one more of my favorite characters would die on Downton Abbey. I was worried about whether we had enough stickers for when people started voting on the advocacy priorities. Each person gets five and a half star stickers to vote with. What if we didn’t have enough stickers?! People who didn’t have stickers would then have to vote by writing their initials like animals and the retreat would be a failure!!!

38 people showed up representing over 25 different organizations. The attendance was great, but I was still stressed. Our facilitator had her baby on a sling. The baby started making loud baby sounds. At one point, we could hardly hear a guest speaker because some children were curious and left the childcare room and climbed on to their mothers’ lap and started asking questions such as “can we get some stickers?” Arrg, I needed to crack down on the babysitter in the childcare room, I thought. For various activities we broke into groups. “If my five-year-old son is looking for me,” said a mother, “can you let him know I’m in the basement with a group?” How could anyone concentrate with children running around?

Then, as I watched our facilitator, whose baby was now snuggled up asleep in her sling, I realized something. In my worries about having an efficient retreat, I lost sight for a moment of why we were having it in the first place. This is what the community looks like. This is our community. We cannot retreat from our community. It is diverse. It includes children and babies. Most of the people in the room were not professional lobbyists or policy analysts. These are direct service providers and parents and educators, people who gave up six hours of their Saturday after working hard all week to be here.

After I took a breath and calmed myself down, I looked around the room and saw how awesome it was that so many people came, and what a great community we had. At least 60% of the room were people of color from all over the world. One Somali mom, for whom English is not her first language, told us it was her birthday. It was her birthday, and she was here in a church foyer working to improve the education system.

The groups took turns reporting out. The five-year old had found his mother and was happily eating a cookie. His mother started reporting on what her group had discussed. “We believe that every school needs a counselor or case manager, or both,” she said. The little boy, not missing a beat, shouted, “My mom is right!” The room broke into laughter. “We first need to map out which school currently has which resources in this area, and what they need,” she continued.

“My mom is right again!” said the little boy, “that’s two times now that she is right.”

The day was a good learning experience for me. Most times the purpose of a retreat is to withdraw from civilization so that we have time to think. But I have seen this to become the default in social justice work, where in the drive for expediency, we leave behind the people most impacted. They become the “for whom” we do the work, the recipient of our fight for equity. It is an ineffective model. When we do this type of work, it cannot be “for” the community. It must be alongside the community, and the Southeast Seattle community looks like this room. The babies, the little kids, the parents fighting hard to understand the discussion, they are not a detriment to the work. They are our community; they are our strength.

Overall, it was a good retreat. I can relax for a couple of days before starting to freak out about our annual dinner.

Being a nonprofit with balls, part 3

Posted on by Vu
[Part 3 of the Nonprofit with Balls series. Read Part 1 and Part 2 before you read this]

batmanAfter several months, I was able to meet with Ted, Luke’s multi-millionnaire friend. It had taken a while to arrange this meeting, and the coordination was done through Ted’s assistant, leaving me to conjure up the image of Ted as an elusive genius, like Batman inside his Bat Cave devising plans and building awesome gadgets to combat injustice.

I got there 20 minutes early, parked my car, and started re-googling Ted and his accomplishments. They were numerous and very impressive. Obviously he is a very smart man. And he’s trying to improve education. Since I chair the Southeast Seattle Education Coalition (SESEC), which is trying to rally community-based organizations and schools to work together to help all the schools in Southeast Seattle succeed, my primary objective was to learn what he’s doing, and to tell him about what SESEC has been up to, and see if there is any ground to collaborate.

The secondary objective was to convince him to give Southeast schools a gazillion trillion dollars.

He had a modest office, a small room tactfully decorated, and all around were pictures of his family. What a nice man, I thought.

“Thank you for meeting with me,” I said, “I know you are extremely busy, and I am very appreciative of your time.” He nodded. Behind his high-quality but simple desk, Ted described his effort with Luke to reform education. I asked him question after question, and he was open and articulate, the easy confidence of a man who has earned his laurels. One day, I thought, I too shall have the easy confidence of a man who has earned his laurels. And I’ll also have a high-quality yet unostentatious mahogany desk.

Ted is trying to build a movement that will change the educational tides, pushing agenda items that many would agree to. As he talked, however, I was getting a little concerned. Not so much about his policy agenda, but about his approach to building the base.

“Our strategy is to target the low-hanging fruit,” he said. I had heard this term before from Luke. Low-hanging fruit are families that are already engaged, have the language skills, don’t work several jobs to make ends meet, etc. “Basically, White families, and some Asian families,” Luke had said.

“So then high-hanging fruit,” I said to Ted, “are people like immigrant/refugee families, or others who have language, socioeconomic, transportation barriers and other stuff they have to deal with that make them hard to reach?”

He nodded.

“Don’t you think, though, sir, that these families have been historically left out of these types of discussion, even though we know they are MOST impacted by our flawed education system?”

He sighed. “Yes, but we only have so much funding.” He paused. “However, we do everything with them in mind.”

I argued that this low-hanging fruit approach is one of the weaknesses of current educational advocacy efforts. How could you inspire people to action when you see them as passive fruit on a tree, waiting to be picked? And doing things with people “in mind” is patriarchal and condescending, which might even be OK if it were actually effective. It hasn’t been. For several decades we have had this “achievement gap,” and this approach has not been closing it.

Having worked in the community for a little bit of time, I understand the temptation to go fast, to go big. We get pressure by funders who are driven by regional, global reach. But it is counterproductive if in our urgency for change and for scope of impact, we leave behind the very people who most need this change. SESEC, comprising over 25 organizations and growing, take our time building relationship and trust and agreeing to a collective agenda. We are rallying diverse communities who speak different languages, who face all sorts of historical and political traumas, who are still trying to navigate a very complex system. We will not be able to quickly agree on anything. It is complicated and sometimes frustrating and always challenging.

It is also inspiring. We are starting to see the SE communities starting to work together. Funders and education advocates need to understand that it takes lots of time to build bridges. It takes years and a series of small victories, leading to medium ones, leading to big ones. It takes belief in the premise that those who are most impacted by anything should be leading the efforts to change it, no matter how messy that process might be.

For forty-five minutes I sat across from Ted. Debating with him didn’t get me anywhere. I also realized nearing the end of our meeting that he never asked me once why I wanted to meet with him. He never asked me a single question about anything, in fact. I started telling him what SESEC is doing, which is precisely trying to engage these “high-hanging” fruit. He nodded, asking no follow-up question. He seemed both focused and bored; focused on his own methods, and bored by my attempts to argue with him and also present the work that SESEC has been doing. He was meeting with me probably only as a favor to Luke.

I thanked him for his time and left the Bat Cave disappointed. Ted seemed intellectually uncurious, as if his admittedly impressive success in life made him immune to ideas that run counter to his own. In The Dark Knight Rises, Bruce Wayne has vast resources to invest in new technologies that he uses to fight injustice. He is influential, connected to others who are just as powerful. Together they can change the world for the better. Batman becomes a symbol of hope for the city. I don’t think that was whom I met.

Or, who knows, maybe Ted just had a bad day. I want to give people the benefit of the doubt. Still, I wrote him the customary thank-you email and have yet to hear a response. Maybe I should hang lower.