How Wellesley College community members can engage in community organizing without being problematic saviors

Members of the Wellesley College community have well intentioned desires for supporting communities fighting for social change, but it is very important for us to first understand our positionality in the world to ensure our well intentions translate into just impact and not cause more harm than good despite good intentions. The key steps to just and impactful change are to unlearn elite ideas of social change, decenter ourselves as saviors, listen carefully to and build relationships with community members most impacted, and properly provide resources when communities ask for help.

Through Severine Autesserre’s research on peacebuilding outlined in her book The Frontlines of Peace, the Wellesley College community should first learn what not to do, by unlearning what they have been taught about peacebuilding and community engagement. The first idea to unlearn is the elitist saviorist mentality towards community engagement. Because Wellesley College community members are highly educated and Wellesley is an elite institution, it is easy to believe that communities need “saving” and pity. To unlearn this idea means seeing communities as equal even if we have more education or money. It means listening to community needs and strengths is the right thing to do, instead of assuming we know what’s best just because we have high degrees. For example in Autesserre’s experiences of peacebuilding work in conflict zones, people commonly had top down approaches to ending conflict that caused more harm than good, with the large assumption that leaving communities after ceasefire treaties had been signed was a marker of success.

By recognizing despite the education of Wellesley we still don’t know everything, we can decenter ourselves and invest time in learning from the community we want to help. This means to engage directly with community leaders, not outsiders who think they know the community. Community members who are closest to the problem are also closest to the solutions. Taking time to understand the community, through engaging in their culture and language shows respect to the community and helps establish trust. In her book, Autesserre detailed experiences where she was sent to help in conflict zones that she wasn’t in expert in, with other people not even bothering to learn the local language. She criticizes this community negligent approach to peacebuilding that is extremely disconnected from the community they are trying to help.

By keeping close to the community, we can learn about the community beyond their deficiencies, but learn about the strengths that should be invested in. Often intervention from outsiders uses the “community needs and deficiency approach”, which doesn’t address root issues, puts a bandaid on the issue, and reinforces the superiority of outsiders. By instead taking an “asset based community development approach” that invests in the strengths of community, the real roots of the issue can be addressed instead of putting a bandaid on the issue. Investing in the assets of the community, transforms the narrative of injustice from one of inevitable pity to one of community resilience.

Autesserre’s peacebuilding techniques emphasize while there are a lot of ways outsiders can do harm, outsiders can do so much good and are essential for sustained social progress. Outsiders are really important to making the world aware of injustice and should not shy away from action out of fear of doing harm. The Wellesley College community members have many assets to offer to communities suffering injustice, and the actions people can take are all dependent on what the community wants.

Some action can include direct financial support for communities, as money is needed to fund community organizing work. Student groups, departments, and alum groups can fundraise for mutual aid and community groups in ways that engage the Wellesley community in the issue. These same groups can directly collaborate with the community to amplify the community’s fight, such as speaker/panel/lecture events with community leaders, and bringing them directly into the classroom like done in PEAC-104. Other examples of direct collaboration include social media content, interviewing for the student and college run newspapers, organizing solidarity protests on campus, but only with the vision and voices of the community affected centered.

The powerful alum network of Wellesley must uniquely be utilized through direct influence of decision makers. Whether alums themselves are powerful decision makers who can directly resource community organizing efforts, or work for powerful decision makers who can legislate policy change, alums can directly advocate for the community affected.

There is so much the Wellesley community can do. The tight knit interconnected nature of the Wellesley community is a powerful tool for building the people and power needed to transform community organizing engagement. Through unlearning conventional ideas about community engagement, and sustained listening and support of the community impacted, the many ways we can engage with the communities will be clear. It is all about combining our assets with the community’s assets to do what’s best.

This was adapted from the final essay written for my intro to the study of conflict, justice, and peace (PEAC-104) at Wellesley College