Embedded Files
This section is crucial. There is a long history of various types of community engagement causing immense harm in communities, often unintentionally.
The assumption is that folks participating in community engagement hope to have positive impacts and overall “do good.” However, good intentions are not in themselves enough to avoid causing harm. It is important to consider how your identities, positionality, and underlying assumptions (or worldview) can impact how you show up in community spaces, and why it is valuable to have awareness of these things as you enter into community work.
While all of the sections of this toolkit are aimed at helping you engage effectively with the community, this module dives deeper into what it means to be ethically engaged.
Here is what you will find in this section:
Here is what you will find in this section:
Understanding Ethics, Positionality and Worldview: What does ethics even mean? What is positionality and worldview, and how can they impact how you engage with a community? Understanding the meaning of these concepts, how they impact us and our communities, and how they should be considered as we step into new community roles are all key to ethical engagement.
Applying Ethical Community Engagement Principles: Learn about the three components of Ethical Community Engagement, as defined by Dr. Tania D. Mitchell: Building Authentic Relationships, Redistribution of Power, and Orientation Toward Social Change. Hear from students and community partners as they demonstrate what those components look like in practice.
Understanding
Understanding
Ethics, Positionality, and Worldview
Ethics, Positionality, and Worldview
Ethical community engagement is not just working with a community in a way that is "good". "Good" is a moral judgment that can look vastly different based on who is making the judgment. Different life experiences and identities will radically influence what is perceived as "good." Tragically, there is a long history of harmful engagement that was typically deemed "good" by many at the time. That is why so many people have invested in developing ethical approaches to community engagement.
How do you know what is ethical?
How do you know what is ethical?
The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics offers some insight:
Ethics refers to standards and practices that tell us how human beings ought to act in the many situations in which they find themselves—as friends, parents, children, citizens, professionals, and so on. Ethics is also concerned with our character. It requires knowledge, skills, and habits.
We all have an image of our better selves—of how we are when we act ethically or are “at our best.” We probably also have an image of what an ethical community, an ethical business, an ethical government, or an ethical society should be. Ethics really has to do with all these levels—acting ethically as individuals, creating ethical organizations and governments, and making our society as a whole more ethical in the way it treats everyone.
When we consider ethics in the framework of community engagement, there are a number of practices and principals that have been developed to define ethical community engagement. We will dig into some of these later in this module in more depth, but below are a few examples that might be considered ethical engagement best practices:
Centering community needs. Asking ourselves "who's interest is being served" in any engagement opportunity is a valuable question to begin with. Walking into an engagement opportunity only thinking about what you want to get out of it as a volunteer (whether it be school credit, experience, etc.) is not centering community needs
Active listening. As a volunteer, it is important to listen to the communities you are working with and hear what the individuals within the community see as challenges and opportunities. Active listening goes hand in hand with centering community needs.
Developing trust and building authentic relationships. When working in community, it's important to build authentic relationships and create a groundwork for mutual trust. "Transactional" approaches to engagement, without an acknowledgement of another's individual humanity, can perpetuate systems of power and privilege and undermine efforts to help.
Cultural humility. We live in a world with diverse cultures, languages, and wordviews. It is important to be flexible, open to learning and adapting one's understanding, and to take responsibility if mistakes are made. Active and continual self-reflection to better understand our own beliefs and cultural identities combined with a willingness to learn from others and honor their beliefs, customs and values helps us develop authentic relationships and avoid harmful assumptions. (Check out Module 4 for more on fostering cultural humility in your service.)
These are just a few examples of how one might engage ethically when working and serving within a community. We will explore ethical engagement best practices in more depth below.
🔍 Useful Resource
A Framework for Ethical Decision Making
Check out this guide, if you would like to learn more about the definition of ethics, the diverse philosophies and perspectives ethics are based on, and a guide to help your own making ethical decisions.
Source: Markkula Center for Applied Ethics
🔍 Useful Resource
Toolbox for Ethical Community Engagement
Read a short interview with a community activist and university director reflecting on what tools students should have in order to engage ethically with a community.
Self-Reflection a key component of ethical community engagement
Self-Reflection a key component of ethical community engagement
In our community engagement efforts, we want to engage effectively and provide positive support to the communities within which we are working. In order to do this, we have to understand what we may be bringing into the service environment -- intentionally or unintentionally -- based on who we are, the identities we hold, and the experiences that have shaped our worldview. We each carry our own blend of assumptions, expectations, privileges, and oppressions.
Understanding our positionality and considering the worldview (and its underlying assumptions) that we bring into our engagement experiences are great reflective steps we can take to become more aware of how we tend to show up in the world; this understanding gives us important perspective as we consider how we can best show up for the communities within which we work.
📣 Community Voices:
What is Positionality?
📣 Community Voices:
What is Positionality?
Your positionality is defined by your characteristics and identities, and who you are in relationship with others. Your identities are often found in the politics of your body, your backgrounds, your choices and experiences. All people have a diversity of identities, sort of like a social map. Considering how all of your identities intersect, or come together, is what makes up your positionality, or your social location.
"The term positionality gets to the idea that we are in a position within society that is based on a specific set of characteristics and identities, and they shape the way we see the world"
- Felipe Ferreira, Community Activist & PSU Alum
📣 Community Voices:
📣 Community Voices:
Why Does Positionality Matter?
Why Does Positionality Matter?
"We're all different people, we come from different backgrounds and are conditioned to act in certain ways, and we don't want to be acting in oppressive ways."
- Isabela Villareal, Next Up Oregon, PSU Alum
"Take [the kinds of] classes that kind of force you to engage and communicate and involve yourself in that critical thinking of who you are, who is the society you're a part of and how do you fit into that society and that community you're in."
- Etsegenet Ayele, Oregon Campus Compact
🔑 Essential Activities
Identifying Your Positionality
Use this worksheet to guide you in identifying your own positionality, or social identity. Take some time to reflect on how your intersecting identities may have influenced your access to power and privilege (or a lack thereof) throughout your life.
Reflection: Identitfying Your Positionality.docx📣 Community Voices:
What is Worldview?
📣 Community Voices:
What is Worldview?
"We might look at the same object, but we might perceive that object differently because there's actual filters that shape the way we perceive the world."
- Felipe Ferreira, Community Activist & PSU Alum
Your worldview is built from your identities, experiences, beliefs, culture, relationships, and so much more. Your worldview is often developed and influenced by your positionality. It is a lens you carry with you everywhere, and it takes intentional effort to be able to set that lens down and see things from another perspective. The first step to doing that is being able to identify what your worldview is.
Why Does Worldview Matter?
"Organizations are mini societies. Whenever you go into a new society you need to learn how that society's culture works: the rules of interacting with other people, the language, how we do things, who are influencers, who are knowledge providers.”
~ Cecilia Sepp, CAE, president and CEO of the American College of Healthcare Administrators
The people and organizations that you are working with also have a worldview, developed over time, that influences the organizational and social culture that you will encounter during your service. Understanding their worldview is as important as understanding your own. That understanding will help you foster an authentic relationship and better contribute to the work they are doing.
As you begin to work with organizations and community groups, it can be helpful to tune in to what makes up the organizational culture within which you will be working. How are decisions made? Who gets to make decisions? How is work organized? What language is used? How are problems or conflicts addressed? How are relationships created and maintained?
"Asking volunteers how their worldview shapes their idea of ethics would be a really good exercise before entering a community. If you've done the homework, you will know how to behave, how to talk to people, how not to talk to people, when to listen, when to talk, when to ask questions..." -Felipe Ferreira
How Culture Manifests Itself—Visible and Invisible
“In analyzing the culture of a particular group or organization it is desirable to distinguish three fundamental levels at which culture manifests itself: (a) observable artifacts, (b) values, and (c) basic underlying assumptions.”
- Helen Spencer-Oakes, Professor of Linguistics
What is the White Savior Complex?
What is the White Savior Complex?
"The white-savior complex is defined as an idea in which a white person, or more broadly a white culture, “rescues” people of color from their own situation."
One particularly harmful worldview that shows up in community engagement too often is the "White Savior Complex." It describes a perspective or pattern in which white individuals or institutions attempt to problem-solve for, or "save," individuals and communities of color, by denying BIPOC agency, decontextualizing problems from root causes and colonial and racist histories, and idealizing white engagement and enthusiam.
🔑 Essential Activities: How do I Avoid a "Savior" Mentality?
Here are some reflective questions from Black Equality Resources to check-in on your perspective and engagement:
Am I aware of the power balance that exists between myself and the community I’m serving?
Do I recognize that I may not know what is best for the community?
Am I talking over the people I intend to serve?
Am I listening, learning, and centering the right voices? Am I listening to Black voices?
Am I expecting recognition or gratitude for my service?
📣 Community Voices:
The Harm of White Supremacy and White Saviorism
📣 Community Voices:
The Harm of White Supremacy and White Saviorism
A lot of harmful community engagement work is connected to the idea of a "White Savior Complex." Being consistently reflective of your own and others' positionality and worldviews, while cultivating an ethical engagement approach can help folks avoid this dynamic.
Ethical Community Engagement -
Applying the Principles of Dr. Tania D. Mitchell
Ethical Community Engagement -
Applying the Principles of Dr. Tania D. Mitchell
Dr. Tania D. Mitchell outlines three components of ethical community engagement in her work: Building authentic relationships, redistributing power, and orienting toward social change. (We highly recommend folks to read her original paper here)
PSU's Student Community Engagement Center (SCEC) builds its work around this ethical engagement model because there is a long history of harm stemming from community engagement that is not rooted in those core components. Any engagement work that does not center on the community being served is not taking an ethical approach. And any community work that is not ethical will inevitably lead to harm.
Below you will find a short video summary of the three components of ethical community engagement, as well as a slideshow that can guide you to a deeper understanding of ethical community engagement and prompt you to make some plans for how you will engage with communities that you are working with more ethically. Further down, you will hear the voices of our community partners and students as they demonstrate what these values can look like in practice.
📣 Community Voices:
Defining Ethical Community Engagement
📣 Community Voices:
Defining Ethical Community Engagement
Ari Vazquez from the Student Community Engagement Center introduces Dr. Tania D. Mitchell's three principles of critical service-learning and how these principles have changed their understanding of what does it mean to be ethically engaged.
"
1. Building Authentic Relationships
1. Building Authentic Relationships
📣 Community Voices:
Building Authentic Relationships
📣 Community Voices:
Building Authentic Relationships
"To have authentic relationships with folks different from myself, I have found being most authentically aligned with my own story of justice and healing has allowed me to own the privleges that I do have, the oppressions that I've experienced has allowed me to show up and see other people fully and work in collaboration with them."
- Carmen Dension, Oregon Campus Compact
📣 "It's really investing in a whole person, and seeing people as whole people" - Isabela Villareal, Next Up Oregon, PSU Alum
Key to building authentic relationships is seeing individuals as whole people. It can be easy to view people in one dimension or with only one identity, but this fails to understand their positionality, or complexities that make us up as people. The perfect remedies to that tendency is curiosity, patience and humility.
Remember, you being authentic and complex is just as important. It is essential to be as honest and vulnerable as you feel safe to do, and that often requires consistent and open communication.
2. Redistributing Power
2. Redistributing Power
📣 Community Voices:
Redistribution of Power
📣 Community Voices:
Redistribution of Power
"Reinvestment is essential...it brings the resources and opportunities back to the community that you are supporting" -Etsegenet Ayele
The people most impacted by an issue are the people best suited to address that issue and educate others. Redistribution of power is essential because it is effective.
For example, when Student Community Engagement Center held a panel on houselessness in Portland, we reached out to advocates and writers who had experienced houselessness. They were experts. We were able to pass our power (in this case money and visibility) to people in the community, and the result was a panel that was profoundly impactful and informative.
"A critical service-learning pedagogy not only acknowledges the imbalance of power in the service relationship but seeks to challenge the imbalance and redistribute power through the ways that service-learning experiences are both planned and implemented. To do so, everyone’s perspective, especially those of community members to whom power is potentially redistributed, “must be accounted for and eventually integrated into the service experience."
- Traditional vs. Critical Service-Learning: Engaging the Literature to Differentiate Two Models by Tania D. Mitchell
🔑 Essential Activities: Questions To Ask Yourself About Redistributing Power:
What resources do I have that could be passed on to someone else? Ex: a social media platform, money, social connections, a classroom
Who is impacted by this issue that could utilize this power?
What can I do to have this power be directly given to impacted people in the future?
Who can collaborate with or guide me to better inform the way I use my power? (When power cannot or should not be passed off)
3. Orienting Toward Social Change
3. Orienting Toward Social Change
3 Horizons Activity: Radical Imagination for a Future We Want
Is your engagement ensuring the problem won't exist in the future?
That is a question that should be guiding all community work, and it is not always an easy one to answer. We all have seen community work that acts as bandaids, never making a substantial impact orn contributing to the issue getting worse.
But what about work that does not feel deeply impactful but still feels important? Passing out food boxes does not solve the system that creates food insecurity. Creating cards for seniors does not change the factors that lead to social isolation. Still, that work is important and impactful.
As with most things, there is a balance. We must address immediate needs while envisioning and building a future that looks different.
One way to contribute to that in your community engagement work is to allow your experiences to transform how you view the world. When you develop a deep understanding of an issue that is based on authentic relationships, it will be hard for you to avoid seeing and operating in the world differently.
Imagine, after you are connected to someone that is isolated because of their age, and after you work beside people dedicated to serving those folks, you will begin to notice how few places are accessible to those with limited mobility, how few events cater to older folks, how the design of your city only considers young professionals. And we hope that you find ways to change those things.
When your service is oriented toward social change, you are deeply impacted by it after it is over; the lens you gain informs the future you envision, and how you utilize your power to build it.
You are doing the work to know your self, your communities, and understand your impact, now it's time to really get to work. How can you make sure your work matters, and you can navigate the challenges and successes that will arise? Check out Module 4.
At the end of each module, we invite you to take the opportunity to share your work from the Essential Activities, and take take to consider three reflection questions. Follow this link to capture your outcomes, and we will send your complete responses to you. Faculty or teams may also use the Reflection Surveys to share feedback and reflection.
Objective:
Recognize and understand ethical community engagement.
Distinguish and articulate your own ethical worldview and the possible impacts of your position within your communities.
Practice authentic relationship-building to engage in interpersonal and systemic social change.
Reflection: At its simplest, reflection is about giving yourself time, space, and support to be transformed by what you are learning and experiencing. For each Toolkit module, you will be offered three "Essential Activities" built into each module, as well as the invitation to answer the "Big 3," the same three questions each time to support conscious consideration of your thoughts, feelings, and even beliefs, and how you hope they will inform your future actions.
🔑 Essential Activities: Module 3
Identifying Your Positionality
Questions To Ask Yourself About Redistributing Power
Three Horizons Reflection
Page updated
Report abuse