Civic Engagement Guidelines

• Understanding issues in their real world complexity
• Recognizing and honoring different forms of knowledge that may reside in/with community partners
• Awareness of your positionality, or who you are as you seek to do civic engagement efforts (such as gender, race, and/or socioeconomic background)
• Doing — how can you take your course content and do something with it beyond the classroom while learning in the process
• Developing leadership skills
• Nurturing a commitment to life-long civic engagement

Trust – the foundation from which all else flows. Usually it’s about trust that the work done together places the community’s needs and benefits first.

Mutual Respect – respect for the expertise that all partners bring to the table. Respect for diverse ways of knowing, such as cultural viewpoints and beliefs about how we know what we know.

Mutual Benefit – each stakeholder should be able to define that benefit they (or their organization or their sector) needs, or received. One partner should not define for the other what the benefits will be or what benefits the others received.

Shared Power – true reciprocity. Sharing power requires and facilitates the full participation of all partners in decision-making and governance. This might also include sharing the money because sometimes money represents power, or provides access to power.

Shared Knowledge – this has several connotations. 1) There are different ‘ways of knowing’ or different knowledge systems, all to be equitably valued 2) the idea that partners are co-generating knowledge, and 3) that the knowledge that comes out of the collaboration is co-owned by the partnership.

Reflection – Co-learning or co-creating new knowledge is a reflective process and those who
engage with it need to be reflective practitioners. A stance of co-learning, examining missteps, making Iterative improvements are all examples of reflective practice.

Adapted from Susan Gust and Cathy Jordan

CHARITY is…

• Something you give to those ‘less fortunate than yourself’. 
• It is top down vertical work.
• Fundamentally good and beneficial, charity stems from moral obligations for giving, sharing, and generosity.
• The historical approach that our social welfare systems have been built on, it gets food into mouths and clothes onto bodies.
• Charity can be beautiful but it also creates a deep divide between “us” and “them”, those that “have” and those that “need”.
• Acts of charity are often dependent on an external evaluation of who is deemed worthy or unworthy, who is judged as deserving and who is not.
• Charity is often focused on the giver feeling generous and the receiver feeling grateful. Charity does not take systemic inequities into consideration. Charity alone will never address the root causes of injustice.
• Charity has the potential to create a hierarchical structure of thinking – between the giver and the receiver. Has there been a time in your life when you were the receiver? What did it feel like?
• Charity is coming at the problem thinking you have the solution – engaging as the teacher or solver

SOLIDARITY is …

• Shoulder to Shoulder work, together, linked and equal.
• The recognition that we truly are in this together, all of our experiences and successes and struggles are intrinsically tied together. 
• Solidarity goes beyond charity, it is not a one-directional top-down perspective, solidarity means locating ourselves within the consciousness of each other
• The recognition that all relationships and power dynamics are multi-directional and acknowledges that everyone has wisdom and resources to collaboratively solve problems.
• Solidarity means that I understand how your struggle is tied to my struggle, and how your success is tied to my success.
• Solidarity means I am part of the problem just like I need to be a part of the solution. Solidarity means doing the hard work of being humble and vulnerable.
• Have you had situations in which you solved a problem in collaboration with someone else – rather than them giving you the answer? What did that feel like?
• Solidarity is listening and being an engaged learner rather than the teacher

Charity is not always easy – to share our time and resources with others without expecting anything in return. Solidarity can be even harder, it means ENGAGING with others in the process in order to strengthen relationships to promote well-being for ALL. It can mean loss of control over HOW the work is done, going outside our personal comfort zone to CONNECT and COLLABORATE, admitting we don’t have the right solutions, and maybe even that we don’t know where to start. 

Shared and Adapted from the CAC

The strengths-based approach focuses on individuals’ strengths, desires, interests, experience, talents, knowledge, and resiliency, rather than on deficits, weaknesses, or problems. It recognizes that strengths can be found within the person themselves, their environment, connections, and community. Strengths-based practice asks us to acknowledge that every individual has a unique set of strengths, talents, expertise, and abilities that they can rely on to overcome challenges. It places decision-making power with the individual, not with external perceptions of what someone “should” do. This is power-with another, not power over another. It is collaborative and based in mutuality and partnership. It encourages us to look at what attributes have helped to facilitate success in the past and utilize those same strengths moving forward.

The strengths-based approach is founded on 7 key principles: A Strengths Approach to Mental Health, Venkat Rao Pulla and Abraham Francis, January 2015