The Power of a Hashtag; #WLC14

Before this summer social media was something I participated in for the sol purpose of making people laugh, complaining about my day, and admiring celebrities from afar. While these are all good reasons to be active on social media accounts I never thought there was much affect from a tweet or Facebook post. This July I found out that the affect may not come from a singular person, but rather a collective group. 

HOBY (Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership) is a non profit organization that I have volunteered with for the last four years. It begins as a leadership conference for high school sophomores and then as an alum there are a multitude of post conference opportunities including the World Leadership Congress (WLC), participating in international service trips, attending Global Youth Summits, and volunteering with the local alumni association. I attended my local leadership conference as a high school sophomore and then attended the World Leadership Congress, hosted in Chicago, the following summer. HOBY in short, has empowered me, motivated me, and quite frankly, changed my life.

This summer I had the extraordinary opportunity to be selected as a volunteer to go back to Chicago for the World Leadership Congress. While I was all geared up and ready to volunteer for ten days, the seminar chair asked us to start using #WLC14 in preparation for the week. In the beginning I thought a hashtag was just a clever way to get volunteers to find each other on twitter, but in the end it was much more than that. 

Before the conference had even started students and volunteers alike were connecting through various forms of social media including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Before you could even think about it, people were expanding their social capital without even attending the leadership conference yet! As alumni of the organization, they had previously formed exclusive bonding social capital with their local HOBY and local alumni association, but then they begun to bridge their connections with a diverse group of students that they had not even encountered yet!

As the week of the conference moved along in the program there were specially designated times for what we called “Social Media Blitzes”. During this time students and volunteers would get together and use their social media to tweet about the great speakers, panelists or activities that we had participated in throughout the day. Often they were direct quotes that moved the students or a thank you to a panelist, but each post always included #WLC14 and often “mentioned” a specific person or organization. These organizations then started taking note of how many students were impacted by what they were hearing. Students immediately started tweeting and direct messaging with these organizations to make a difference in their local communities through fundraising and events. They had already made contact with organizations all the while still being in Chicago!

Over the span of a week, #WLC14 trended four times nationally because of these social media blitzes. Volunteer organizations all over the country started following students and the social capital of 402 students and over 50 volunteers was immensely growing. As a group we had reached out to Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education for the US, and cool enough, he replied back with a video message about his support of HOBY and the World Leadership Congress. It is with the help of a large group that the message got across to Duncan. 

When watching the “Is Social Media Sparking Civic Engagement?” video with Cary Booker, I couldn’t help but remember this experience I had this summer. The idea that a group of people who wouldn’t normally be seen as having a voice (urban communities in New Jersey as the case with Booker and the youth of America as in my case) now have the power to reach out to institutions and governmental figures in order to engage in civic life and influence others. Like Booker said, times are changing and the traditional government is now adapting to new social standards. Because of this idea, a group of individuals from all over the world were able to reach out to people on social media and not only expand their social capital, but show that a group of people, and a simple hashtag can reach others.  

I challenge you all to think of your personal experiences with social media and in particular, hashtags. Have you ever reached out to an organization or governmental figure on social media? Have you ever become civically engaged with a hashtag? And finally, do you think having the resources to reach out and engage with these individuals or organizations on social media make it easier to be civically engaged? I’m interested to hear other peoples thoughts and experiences! 

For Politics: Hashtag the struggle is real

It's understandable why one wouldn't want to get into politics -- politics is intimidating. There is a lot of conflict that can get to be really passionate. In the world of politics, a lot of lies and misinformation fly around; it's hard to get a grasp of what's really going on and what to be confident in. Not to mention, you can probably go your whole life and never get involved, and still be relatively content. So why bother?

Are there things that go on in this world that you don't agree with? I'm sure there's got to be something. Institutional suffering of animals from birth until death and mass slaughtering of them; child slavery in Ghana and the Ivory Coast; people in the very city you're living in going hungry every night; immense amounts of soil erosion from unsustainable farming practices -- these are all things that not only may you be unaware of, but that you may potentially be contributing to if you enjoy eating meat, eating chocolate, and indiscriminately buying food in general.

You can make the choice to go vegan, you can make the choice to buy only fair trade or from farmers' markets, and you can make the choice to spend some of your own free time to help get food into food banks -- these are all valid choices to make on the individual level to help make whatever small differences possible in regards to these occurrences that you may not agree with, or at least to remove your own personal responsibility from them. But so what? It makes you feel better, reduces cognitive dissonance, but are you making a difference in this world? To some extent, you may be.

Most big decisions are made within government, however. The president only has so much power. The community you live in has budgets and plans that are determined by people in office. Different people, whether they're people in office or people in the community, have different views, as obvious as that may sound. But I think it's an important point to make -- while someone may think it's important that less people go hungry at night, others are concerned that enacting a policy that will prevent hunger will enable people to take advantage of whatever benefits the government may offer as assistance and contribute less to society. This is just one of the examples of the major conflicts in politics. While one policy may have one intention, it may bring about other effects.

I know I didn't make thinking about politics any easier; that was never my intention. I think it's important to understand all of the ambiguities and struggles that come with thinking about politics. I think it's important not to avoid thinking about these things. Understand what's important to you and participate in this lively, interesting game of democracy; it's frustrating, but kind of fun when you get into it. Constantly challenge your own beliefs. Understand why others are voting opposite of why you are. I believe that this is the best way to understand and appreciate what politics are. Then, look at who is running, and what they are supporting, and choose your candidate.

Validation tends to come in numbers, and maybe, in some senses, that's why democracy can work. However, we need participation in order to validate democracy itself. Challenging your own beliefs can help to legitimize what you really think and help you to stray from the aggressive influence of mainstream media and find yourself. Dig deep. Represent yourself. Help and shape society in the way that you see fit.

Thanks for reading. Hope it's provoked some fresh thoughts, uncomfortable feelings, or just some cool ideas.

Why do we participate in Civic Engagement?

In addition to taking Foundations of Civic Engagement, I am also taking American Revolution and the Founding of the United States. Both these classes focus on society and how they've changed as a result of civic engagement; coincidentally they both have got me thinking about why people get involved in civic engagement to begin with.

Prior to the 1760s the American Colonies were pretty much left alone from the British Empire, they were part of it, but they mostly governed themselves. Following the end of the Seven Years War and the ceasing of internal turmoil in the English government, the Empire decided to focus a bit more on the American Colonies. Imposing taxation laws and threatening to take away property and privileges they had known for so long, the American colonists believed Parliament to be corrupted. And, going off 18th century political thought, they believed their nation could only survive if the government remained virtuous. Building on that, they believed that they were being more British than Parliament standing up for their liberty and did not even want to break away from the Empire until 1776!

A couple weeks ago when we skyped with Professor Campbell's students from Turkey we got a whole new perspective on civic engagement. They were pushing for a more democratic Turkey because that is where they lived and they felt the everyday effects of a less than democratic nation that they lived in. They, similar to the American colonists, thought it to be their duty and responsibility to stand up and defend their liberty for democracy.

I think both of these examples show the reason why participation in civic engagement might be less in America now than it was 238 years ago. It also might explain why people in Turkey or nations with less than democratic principles often have people fighting for their liberties. These people feel the everyday force of a non democratic government and rather than taking on civic engagement as an afterthought, it is a necessity.

After all, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington never wanted their position, but instead they believed it was their responsibility to uphold them. Do you think we should hold these thoughts on our responsibilities?

Where I Found Civic Engagement

            When getting involved in a volunteer project, I think there are many components that contribute to whether it was truly civic engagement or not. I would like to focus on the learning experiences that come with new volunteer experiences and activities. At the end of this summer, I came back to school a week early, along with nine other volunteers, to be a service mentor in a new program called the Welcome Week Service Project. It was a three day project that brought in a group of incoming freshman a week early so that they could jump into volunteering right from the beginning of their college career. There were multiple different service sites, and the mentors and students were broken up and assigned to one of the four. If given the choice, I would have chosen to work with the group that was assigned to the Discovery Center. I sincerely enjoy working with kids, and I find myself pretty good at it. However, I was assigned to the group that was help out at BU Acres, a small new farm on the Binghamton University campus.

            Although this was not my first choice in service projects, I still believe that this was an important community project, not only because of the work we accomplished at the farm, but what we learned while doing it. On our first day at the site, before we began any work, the director of the BU acres farm, Sean Cummings, gave us an overview of the goals and hopes for greater sustainability at BU Acres. He explained to us how they are using compost and cardboard garbage from our campus to create an edible forest garden in the space they have available. He also gave us some information on the harvesting they do there and informed us that most of the food they grow is brought back to the CIW dining hall to be served. I found it very interesting to see how the materials used on our campus come full circle and are used to produce more food. Our second day of the project was when I started to see how important it is know the context of the service work you’re doing to really be civically engaged. Sean Cummings took the time to explain to us the current status of hunger in Binghamton and Broome County. He explained to us that most of this region is considered a food desert, meaning that there is a lack of affordable, quality groceries within a certain distance. This is something that especially affects those who do not have a car and have to rely on public transportation. Going into my sophomore year, I was still unaware of the severity of hunger in the city that I spent most of my last year in.

            Working at BU Acres was certainly not my first, or even second, choice when it came to the welcome week service project. When I was presented with the opportunity, I was more interested in the “mentor” aspect of the position. I was looking forward to meeting some incoming freshmen and encouraging them to “get involved” right off the bat. Honestly, most of the freshman in my group weren’t too happy about the location they were assigned to either. However, I think we were the group that got the most out of this experience (even though there was another group that got to go to the Ross Park Zoo and play with penguins). The other mentors and I really tried to encourage the freshmen in our group to realize why the work they were doing was so important to their new community. After two days, we left our service site with a deeper understanding of the hunger problem in Binghamton, the organizations that are working to end that problem, and how we can help them. I think our group reached the point of civic engagement because we were informed about the cause we were helping and we left our service site with an understanding that more than an occasional visit to a soup kitchen is necessary to improve hunger in Binghamton.

If anyone is interested in more information about BU Acres I attached a link to a Pipe Dream article that explains more about their project and their Facebook page:

http://www.bupipedream.com/news/22946/farm-fresh-bu-student-farmers-bring-more-locally-grown-organic-options-for-on-campus-dining/

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Binghamton-University-Acres-Farm/107382186122882

Going Beyond What You See

For the last several month I have been involved heavily with an organization called Nothing But Nets. They are a part of the United Nations Foundation that works to prevent the spread and contraction of Malaria across the African Continent. I have been a part of a student fellowship with the organization where I go to trainings in Washington DC and then am responsible for bringing the campaign to my campus.

The way the organization works is extremely simple; $10 sends a life saving bed net to a family in Africa. At its base-most level, this is an incredibly easy concept to get behind. Malaria kills a child every 60 seconds, creates more than 3 billion dollars in lost productivity every year, and is a highly preventable and treatable disease. It is made so easy for the average person to get involved in this campaign.

This is what makes Nothing But Nets so attractive to me in the first place; easy to get involved, hard to argue against. While Nothing But Nets and its partners have worked to raise many millions of dollars over the last 10 years or so, this is not nearly enough to reach the longterm goal of total eradication of Malaria. That would cost approximately 5.6 billion dollars, an impossible figure for a single, or even group of charity organizations who rely entirely on the goodwill of donors through grassroots campaigns to achieve. Fortunately however, Nothing Buts Nets recognizes this set back and tackles it in a way few charity organizations I have heard of do.

The Nothing But Nets model goes beyond the basic donation model and actively encourages its supporters to engage in advocacy, and engages politically as an organization. It teaches people how to, why to, and where to talk to your congressmen and senators, and the specific legislation or government funds necessary to conquer Malaria. Nothing But Nets itself works very closely with many key members of Congress as well as several organizations within the United Nations in order to assure the maximum amount of funding and on the ground support that they can receive. This is how Nothing But Nets manages to have somewhere in the range of 2-3 billion dollars of direct support going towards Malaria research, prevention, and treatment.

They still go even further with their mission however. 5 of the $10 it takes to send a bed net goes toward the actual production of the nets. This is often done in factories in areas where Malaria is pertinent in order to connect the people effect to the issue itself. The other $5 goes towards training locals to distribute nets, educate their neighbors on how to properly use them and why, and towards training local healthcare professionals in a successful attempt to build up the healthcare systems in the regions most effected.

Nothing But Nets is not a one trick pony. This is the reason I love working with them so much. They serve as an excellent model for teaching my friends and peers how to build up their own organizations or projects. The more angels from which you tackle an issue, the more connections to other organizations, the more your elected officials are invested in them, the more success you are going to have in your endeavor. Its unquestionable.

I implore you all to think about the causes you care most about, the organizations you are most involved with,  and to think about what ways they can go beyond what they can see. I would love to serve as a resource to you on coming up with ways of engaging more deeply in the work that you are trying to do. Seriously, hit me up I want to be challenged, I love when people don't think their organizations can do any more than they already do, and I want to help people and groups be more successful in the important work they do than they already are.


-Jason Flatt

Importance of leadership

I feel as though up to this point in class and in readings we've focused mainly on the personal aspect of civic and political engagement, in that we pose the question “what can I do”, and while I do feel that this is one of the most important questions we can ask ourselves in this context, I think it’s also important to appreciate the impact our leaders have on the engagement in our societies. In an ideal world, societies would be completely self sufficient in that communities would come together to assess and solve the issues that they face, but I believe this overlooks a major aspect of human psychology, in that for the most part people like to fit in, to be a part of a group, this instinct not to stray or get left behind, or in other terms: “to follow the leader”. From the “Neither Leaders nor Followers” reading that we did, we learned about the ironic disservice where a charismatic and successful or idolized leader ends up doing the most harm to their respective society.
While the statement is valid, in that usually the death of such great leaders, especially when still in power (such as JFK and FDR) causes and overwhelming sense of hopelessness or distraught, I don’t believe it’s fair to say that outweighs the contributions of their leadership. While yes it is the case that it would be much more beneficial for a society to be stable and self reliant, it is easy for people to forget about the issues that may not plague them, but still be widespread through out their society. Bringing these issues to light is not only the responsibility of a leader, its their success in creating a better society that we use as one of the criteria in determining their “greatness” or success as a leader.
By far the most important thing a leader can do is to use their position to bring awareness and change to social issues within their community. For example any issue would become more mainstream. Leaders have the ability to greatly inspire their community, especially as figures who are “idolized”. If they take up certain issues that they deem important than the citizens who view them with such high regard will either be swayed by their support, or compelled to do their own research. It is the responsibility of these leaders to use their positions of power to try to change the problems they see in society. By being in these positions of power these leaders also have more of an ability to make change. Especially in societies like ours, where this strong leadership can be used to bring about change and come together for change. For example when Obama takes a strong stance on an issue it becomes validated on a both national and interaction stage, his support makes the issues that my have once been overlooked serious topics up for national debate.
















http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_why_good_leaders_make_you_feel_safe#t-676473

Good Intentions are Simply Not Enough

There are a number of different angles from which civic engagement can be looked at.  What I have personally found most interesting to discuss so far this year involves looking at civic engagement through a service-oriented lens.  I believe that an overwhelming problem our society faces in regards to volunteering, donating, serving, etc., is the lack of research that people are willing to put into the time/money they are so “graciously” donating to certain causes.  The article To Hell With Good Intentions, though provocative, brings about a number of valid points regarding the serious controversies that surround the concept of service and forces people to face them head on. 

I believe that an inherent problem with the overwhelming majority of society in regards to service is that we tend to rely on our “good intentions” alone when walking into a service project or signing a check off to a cause in a third world country, and walk away feeling assured that we have made a positive impact.  Not enough people are willing to research or listen to what issues are prevalent at that time in a particular society from the people that actually live in the society, or even if they want to be helped at all.  More often than not, outsiders walk onto a service site with their own preconceived notions about exactly what the population that they are helping needs, as opposed to working with that group of people to find out what would actually be the most valuable for them.  Who are we, acting as a group of ignorant strangers, to walk in to a society and define their biggest problems and decide the best way to fix them?   It is essential to understand that we do not have to advertise and flaunt our own “superiority” and predetermined role of making a definable difference in peoples’ lives.  We too often need some type of affirmation that we are in fact making that “difference” that is so heavily emphasized in service work.  I believe that it can be a bigger testament to how committed you are to serving others when you are willing to admit that you were merely a set of hands in a process, or accept that a certain population may truly not want your help.   

Though I believe the article spoke in too severe a tone and that service is certainly an important aspect of our society, I also believe that it is important for us to step back and be willing to address our own inability and helplessness in certain situations.  I believe that more service learning efforts should be put into play, putting a greater emphasis on the exchange that can occur between cultures and the solidarity that can be fostered to create lasting, meaningful relationships.  We should make greater efforts to work with as opposed to exert power over the people we are attempting to aid.  Let go of your own pride, build relationships, and work to bridge instead of widen gaps between communities.   Good intentions are necessary to perform service; however, good intentions alone are simply not enough. 

Here is a TED Talk  reviewing more of I have talked about –

http://www.ted.com/talks/ernesto_sirolli_want_to_help_someone_shut_up_and_listen