UPDATE – RESCHEDULED FOR FALL 2021; Mentoring in Focus: So, You Want to Save the World?

This workshop will be rescheduled for fall 2021. Stay tuned for a new day and time!

We frequently work with students, faculty, and alumni, who are eager to solve some of the world’s most pressing issues. Often, those problems are outside of the United States. We often find ourselves seduced to solve what appears to us to be urgent and readily solvable problems and launch solutions without realizing the harm we might cause to the community we want to serve. This brings us to ask a few questions about the nature of how we go about solving global problems. Why do we believe that people are not solving problems in their own communities? Why are we drawn to solving problems outside of our own communities? People may be well-intentioned but what is the cost of their intervention? What is the cost of “the reductive seduction of other people’s problems”? 

Join the Nelson Center and the Swearer Center for our next Mentoring in Focus installment, So, You Want to Save the World? Betsy Shimberg, Associate Dean of the College for Community-Engaged Co-Curriculum and Director of Student Development at the Swearer Center, will lead the workshop, based on the article hyperlinked above by Courtney Martin, co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Network, FRESH Speakers, and the Bay Area chapter of Integrated Schools, as well as the Storyteller-in-Residence at The Holding Co. This workshop is designed for mentees and mentors alike eager to better understand new perspectives on problem identification and helping each other navigate the complexities of global problems.

Interested in learning more about this topic? Read through the Swearer Center’s Whiteness in Service Learning library.