Training for Change Workshop

The Center for Ethics invites students, faculty, staff, and interested members of the local community to attend a public activism workshop this Saturday, Oct 4th as part of the fall programming series 2008: Politics, Ethics & Citizenship.

 

PUBLIC ACTIVISM WORKSHOP

Hosted by Training for Change

 Saturday, Oct 4^th

^10-4pm

Miller Forum, Moyer Hall

 

 

Since 1992 Training for Change has been committed to increasing capacity around the world to help groups stand up more effectively for justice, peace and the environment.  This day-long activism workshop is open to the campus and larger Lehigh Valley community.  The workshop will focus on an introduction to non-violent direct action for social justice.

Lunch will be provided to all workshop participants.

 

Participants must register in advance.  To do so, please contact Judy Ridner (ridner@muhlenberg.edu) or Michele Deegan  (deegan@muhlenberg.edu).

An evolving system

Thanks everyone for making tonight’s dinner event awesome.  David Cooper (‘11) and Sarah Sansolo (‘09) served up an incredible menu (great call on the peanut butter cream pie!).  The a cappella groups helped make things festive–and I didn’t realize so many RJs are in these groups (confirming my sense of the talent in this community).  And the Provost’s announcement made an already wonderful evening even more amazing.  I can only imagine that the Endowed Chair will open up new opportunities–for all of us.  I know that I will welcome the additional time to reflect (chapter 5 of Mr. Scheller’s updated edition of Think, Decide, Do) on the program, incubate new activities, and keep the program continually evolving.  You’re part of this living, breathing system.  Mr. Scheller encouraged everyone to share your assessments, ideas, suggestions, and wishes with me.  By creating this blog I hope you have an accessible way to do just that.  My door is always open–here, electronically, and in Walson 200.  How can we make this year matter?  What can we, as a community, do to make a real difference?

Look & Feel Updates Coming Soon

Hello, change agents!

In keeping with our program’s theme, the look and layout of this blog will be changing soon to accomodate more information about the program and its participants. If things seem a little strange visually (in terms of colors or layout) for a little while, it will get better — I promise!

Looking forward to keeping in touch with our honors community. 

All the best,

Sean Killeen
RJ Webmaster

Sports for Change

I’ve been thinking about the RJ athletes, many of whom have games/practice tomorrow evening that will prevent them from gathering at the RJ annual dinner.  These students often link to sports-focused community service activities, like Second Mile, or organize the sports activities for Jefferson Field Day.  This post honors the athletes within the RJ community and recognizes that sports provide spaces for positive change as well.  Just consider Right to Play.  This is an international humanitarian organization that uses sport and play programs to improve health, develop life skills, and foster peace for children and communities in some of the most disadvantaged areas of the world.  Right To Play trains local community leaders as Coaches to provide sport programs in more than 20 countries affected by war, poverty, and disease in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.  The organization focuses on four strategic areas:  basic education and child development, health promotion/disease prevention, conflict resolution and peace education, and community development.

“When children play, the world wins.”

Stories for Change

Tomorrow I join the RJs in their First Year Seminar, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” to introduce them to digital storytelling.  It’s become a focal point of the RJ capstone experience in senior seminar to create a digital story.  Building on student enthusiasm for the work and the really great storytelling that’s come out of the senior seminar, FYS instructor Chaplain Bredlau and I decided to try digital storytelling in the first year as well.  Most RJs are familiar with my research and practice in digital storytelling, especially with community teens.  After more than a decade of digital storytelling with youth, and about six years of digital storytelling with Muhlenberg College students, I’m deeply convinced that these digital media technologies and practices hold out real potential for documenting and creating change. A new website, www.storiesforchange.net, explores these possibilities and offers many useful resources that RJs can draw on in their digital storytelling work.  A goal is to create a website with all of the RJ digital stories that have been created in the last three years and into the future.  I look forward to watching the graduating seniors stories take shape (and sound), and now I am eager to see how the work takes shape with the first year RJs.

Change, baby, change!

Have RJs noticed that our program’s focus on change is at the center of both presidential candidates’ PR efforts?  ”Change we can believe in,” and “Real change.”  An opinion piece in the New York Times today really brought this to my attention.  In “Making America Stupid,” Thomas Friedman argues that “Unless we make America the country most able to innovate, compete and win in the age of globalization, our leverage in the world will continue to slowly erode.”  He’s writing here about the innovation required to design a new energy policy, one that isn’t dependent on “drill, baby, drill!” Friedman asks, “why not throw all our energy into innovating a whole new industry of clean power with the mantra “invent, baby, invent?” The 21st century technologies of renewable energy, that is.  For people who spend a lot of time thinking about change (RJs), how do we do more than create mantras and slogans and really effect positive change in the world?

Annual RJ Fellows Dinner

Come meet the RJ class of 2011, visit with classmates you haven’t seen in a while, and chat with RJ Fellows professors and the RJ Fellows Program founders, the Scheller family.  Our yearly formal dinner takes place on Monday, September 22, from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at Keneseth Israel Synagogue, across the street from Muhlenberg at 2227 W. Chew Street.

Sarah Sansolo (‘09) and David Cooper (‘11) are helping with planning, and it promises to be the best annual dinner yet!  Attendance is required.  Please RSVP to Susan Fredericks at sfrederi@muhlenberg.edu.

Change is not a spectator sport

Why a blog?  I’ve been thinking about an RJ blog for some time.  This summer, I was powerfully convinced of the potential of digital media to help draw community together.  I follow, as many at Muhlenberg do, the Facebook group, Stay Strong with Jacy.  I observed in awe the number of group members grow to nearly 700 virtually within days of its creation by fellow RJ, Les Polk.  I still believe online communication is no substitute for face-to-face interaction, but I cannot deny the potential of this medium to help build and sustain communities dispersed in space and time.  So I’m creating this blog to stay better connected to the RJ community, and to share news, ideas and opportunities of interest to students learning about change.  

This change in communication signals bigger changes to come for a program that, by definition and design, needs to keep evolving, keep innovating, be forward-thinking.  Ideas about change emerge in communication, so my hope is that this blog grows into a space of interaction, dialogue, debate.  This is not a one-way street:  everyone is invited to join the conversation, add your own reflections, ideas, inspirations, and creativity.  So speak up!  Change is not a spectator sport!