Entering, Engaging, and Exiting Communities Workshops
What I Did
I taught and facilitated workshops with the UM Ginsberg Center to prepare students and staff for equitable engagement with community partners across different departments, programs, courses, and initiatives. These workshops emphasized reflection on social identities and power dynamics that are important to acknowledge during community engagement work to ensure the outcomes are mutually beneficial. I also developed workshop activities to help participants build skills around building trust and rapport with community partners.
Role: Community Engagement Lead Liaison
Teammates
Neeraja Aravamudan, Supervisor + Co-facilitator
Marianna Coulentianos, Fellow Lead Liaison + Co-facilitator
Ebony Johnson, Fellow Lead Liaison + Co-facilitator
Cecilia Morales, Fellow Lead Liaison + Co-facilitator
Emily Sabo, Co-facilitator
Taru, Co-facilitator
Danyelle Reynolds, Assistant Director + Co-facilitator
Katie Van Zanen, Co-facilitator
Elana Goldenkoff, Co-facilitator
Erpan Ahat, Co-facilitator
Stakeholders
Toolkit
Active listening
Think-pair-share
Multipartial facilitation
The Process
Clarify the Goal
The Ginsberg Center strives to cultivate and steward equitable partnerships between communities and the University of Michigan in order to advance social change for the public good. One area of practice is to prepare students for community engagement work whether it be through courses, student organizations, research, or independently.
Understand the Situation
Participants involved in community engagement have positive intentions to do effective work with their community partners. However, university-community partnerships are often power-imbalanced due to differing timelines, incentives, and levels of awareness of community priorities. This dynamic can result in less effective community engagement outcomes, especially for the community organizations and those they serve.
Bridge the Gap
In order to support students, staff, and faculty in developing equitable partnerships with communities, I facilitated curricular and co-curricular workshops on Entering, Engaging, and Exiting (E3) Communities. Each workshop was carefully designed for the specific audience and crafted to walk participants through community engagement practices that steward positive and respectful relationships. I highlighted the perspectives of community partners and taught foundational learning around service work and social change on top of the best practices for entering, engaging, and exiting communities.
How I Did It
Click through the gallery to read more about each step of my process.
