Exploring Poverty and Care in Seattle

Student Name

Isabella Brown

Experiential Learning Category

Service

Associated UW Course (if applicable)

GEOG 331 AD

Summarize your proposed experiential learning activity, including the primary focus of
your activity, your intended actions, and the expectations of your supervisor and/or
organization/partners.

My project will be through the Rising Out of the Shadows Young Adult Shelter, or ROOTS. I will be
working as a Dinner Meal Crew member once to twice a week for the quarter, and possibly up to 3
months or longer depending on the organization's need. My tasks will be to work in a team to prepare and
serve dinner, and clean up the kitchen. Additionally, volunteers are asked to mingle with those receiving
services; to create a friendly and comfortable environment of trust and connection, instead of seeming
like a higher power giving charity. This position is through the class of Global Poverty and Care, so I will
not only give time and hopefully make a difference, but also open my eyes to inequality and care ethics in
my own community.

Explain how your activity demonstrates the values of the Honors Program Experiential
Learning area you selected. Rather than reiterating our definition, outline how your
activity embodies this definition.

My project is through the class Global Poverty and Care, which has a required Service Learning aspect.
The class asks Service Learners to commit 3 - 5 hours per week to a volunteer organization for the
entirety of the quarter. I will have one to two three-hour shifts for the Dinner Meal Crew position per week,
and through this will have sustained engagement with ROOTS and their mission. ROOTS is trying to
serve the homeless youth in the community, and interacting with these individuals and hearing their
stories will not only benefit them through serving, but will also add to my understanding of the
responsibility to care for and about the systematically oppressed and impoverished, and how they came
into their current positions.
How and why did you select this engagement? What skills or experiences do you hope to
gain from it?

I selected the Dinner Meal Crew position through the Carlson Center, which connects students to
organizations in need of volunteers, for Service Learning. I chose the Dinner Meal Crew because I am an
avid cook and baker, and so hope to bring my experiences to the table, as well as delicious and nutritious
food for the homeless young adults in the shelter. I also chose this position because although the work is
in the kitchen cooking (more labor-based), there is a large component of interacting with the guests
(humanity-based). I am excited to connect with other young adults who, possibly through no fault of their
own, have fallen into unfortunate situations, and through these relationships gather a better idea of how to
help.

How does this activity connect to your concurrent or past coursework? How does it
speak to your broader education goals and experiences?

This project connects to two geography courses I have taken with Vicky Lawson, the first being Global
Inequality, and the second being my current class, Global Poverty and Care. I have and am still learning
about how poverty and inequality are not only concepts that exist right in our own neighborhoods (not just
in the Global South), but also how these issues are misleadingly framed in order to keep those with power
on top, whether economically or politically, and to continue a systematic oppression of those who do not
have enough agency to change their own situations. My broader goals are to discover problems in this
world that have become part of the status quo, and to learn how to fix these issues, instead of ignore
them.

How will your activity contribute to the larger goals of the organization/your partners?

ROOTS has only one paid staff member per shift, so they depend on volunteers. Without University of
Washington Service Learners and other members of the community, there would be no way for them to
open their doors. So, my contribution through working the dinner shift will help bring food to the homeless
youth served through ROOTS, create the more caring environment of trust and support that ROOTS
strives for, and help ROOTS to continue being able to help the 45 guests that they are able to host per
night.

Estimated hours per week: 3

Estimated project start: 01/09/2014

Estimated project end: 03/14/2014

May we share excerpts from your application and final reflection to use as examples?

[?]

Supervisor
First name
Kristy
Last name
Copeland
Title/Affiliation
Teaching Assistant for GEOG 331
Organization (if applicable)
GEOG 331: Global Poverty and Care
UW NetID (if applicable)
kcopelan
Email
kcopelan@uw.edu

Reflection

My Experiential Learning Project was a Service Learning position with ROOTS Young Adult Shelter twice
a week on the Dinner Crew, which came alongside the class of Geography 331: Global Poverty and Care.
Over a night, the 2-4 of us in the kitchen would cook, serve, and clean up a meal for 45 people. In
between stirring industrial-sized pots of soup and scraping plates, I had the opportunity to connect with
many of the guests, who ranged in age from 18-25. With the completion of my project, I have come to see
that many of the preconceived ideas on poverty that exist today have no ground, and that each individual,
including myself, can have a role in changing them.

A common discourse that I learned about through Geography 331 that circulates is that the poor are poor
due to their own fault, lack of grit, or being undeserving. At ROOTS, it became clear that the reason for
the homelessness of the young adults being served was hardly their own lack of ambition; many clients I
spoke to told me of hours spent studying or searching for employment. Many of the guests are foster
children who were kicked out the moment they turned 18. Some received scholarships to the University of
Washington but cannot afford housing, have recently lost jobs, or have families who are unable to extend
support.

My Experiential Learning Project showed me that in order to treat guests with care ethicality, it is
necessary to acknowledge their inherent dignity instead of considering the discourse of lack or fault
described above. I have volunteered since I was young, and giving back was something that my family
valued highly. I knew that caring for the less fortunate was necessary, but I had never thought to question
the reason why: why people were in poverty, why their actions were not changing their situations, why a
society could exist that let the most unequal distribution of wealth in almost all the world occur in the
affluent United States of America. The people I interacted with were often actively searching for jobs or
recently unemployed because of company cutbacks or impersonal economic hardships of employers.
They were struggling to support their families and doing everything they could. I did not make a
connection between these actions and the fact that they were still unable to change their situations. In my
original proposal, I expressed the wish to understand and potentially change the causes of poverty and
inequality. My experiences through this project, in both volunteering off campus and in learning about
systematic problems through class, helped me to begin to discover a systematic explanation that has
developed over history to create the situation that is in place today.

My Geography class as well as speaking with the staff of ROOTS taught me that due to the cut of the
public sector of care, if a family does not or cannot provide care for one member, that individual has
nowhere to turn to. The help the government provides is hard to receive, hard to keep, and not enough to
actually live on. So, organizations have had to step in and take over to care for marginalized victims of the
system. I think this knowledge will help me to have deeper relationships with the people I serve, because
instead of subconsciously judging them for what they are "lacking" or what they have "failed to do," I have
learned to instead search for historical roots, or how they are stuck in a stereotype that has been
projected upon them in a system that seems to be more against than for them.

My Experiential Learning Project has helped me to more fully understand my own goals for the future. I
have interacted with people who have such great needs, and whose lives vary so greatly from mine
despite the fact that we are practically neighbors. After discovering root causes of this inequality and how
it has played out in my own city, I have come to realize that I want to do something about it. I now know
that I can give my time and make small changes to help certain individuals (such as cooking meals for
homeless young adults), but I hope that by the end of my four years here I will have tools to develop and
implement changes that affect the entire structure of poverty and homelessness in a more long term
manner. In Economics classes, I have begun to understand how markets work, how economic positions
of individuals arise, and how to create sustainable long-term plans for growth or equality. This project has
given me motivation to study my hardest and learn all that I can so that I may be able to create a
sustainable solution to better the world around me.

ROOTS really makes an effort to ensure that all understand the problems with residual poverty analysis,
and even in my volunteer application they explained that if one thought that poverty was caused by
laziness or bad choices, he or she may not be the best fit to interact with the homeless. They work hard to
restore a level of dignity and equality for the homeless, and with this goal in mind, they taught me how to
value all people and treat them with respect for their inherent dignity. Their relational outlook on poverty
implies that more of society should be involved in the care for the impoverished and homeless in society,
and I am so grateful that my Service Learning experience has given me the tools to defend this idea. I
have loved my experiences in serving through this project because they have shown me that there is
hope. There are so many paths to move feelings of anger or sadness towards action, whether that be
working a shift with ROOTS, joining programs to provide free tutoring to children, or simply being more
prudent about diction regarding the poor. Whether it be through starting a simple dialogue, volunteering,
or evaluating my actions care ethically, I know that my future actions will be more caring and relational.
Also, I have learned that the better one understands needs, the better they can be addressed. There is no
way to understand a need without direct exposure to it and cooperation with those experiencing it, as I
was asked to do at ROOTS. The desire to help and thinking you know what is best can often leave the
needs of some ignored. Global Poverty and Care Professor Lawson quoted one of her previous students,
saying, "Where there is ignorance, there is no care." My Experiential Learning Project has lifted much of
my ignorance, and I am ready to begin caring for the world around me more fully.

Submitted on

Apr 10, 2014

Final Evaluation:

Response

Completed

Submitted on

Apr 13, 2014

Comments

Bella is an excellent student whose final paper for our class was among the best. Congratulations on a
project well done and on your personal transformation as reflected on here!