Learning in Action: Just Who's Turn is it to Learn?

Below you will find one of what will be delivered over the next several days as my SWSP7123 Course comes to a close.  These are my reflections....

 

Learning in Action?  Was this the aim of the actual project?  In an overwhelming response by this author, Yes!  The initial aim was for a project to be created for the youth involved in King County 4-H to publicly share their feelings and experiences within their chosen 4-H projects, as a method of inclusion and a bit of an tool to add to the adults working the frontlines of the campaign to utilize in rallying support, new membership and persuade County Council members and various local political support as needed.  Although, the project is in the process of being fully developed and proposed by the King County 4-H Administrator, I’m not sure that overall this is where the main learning will take place.  I personally, feel that I have been the one to learn the most.  Where in the past I’ve only experience ease in organizing factions for support here and there for various causes and I’ve never been a lack for people who are willing to lend a helping hand—I’ve made it a point to join organizations where this is the way things are often times run and facilitated.  In other words, “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours…in the meantime we get to do something wonderful for our neighbors and overall help to make our community a better place!”   Well, this has been a different case where I am concerned and this project.  I have been the biggest recipient of an education here and only hope that I can take what I’ve learned and am still learning and continue to mold, adapt and plan for this organization and others.

In this particular case I have been working within First Order change; i.e. “Assisting groups to do what they do better”(Shevellar 2010).  King County 4-H has been a longstanding program with an even longer standing national tradition within the agricultural sector of the United States.  Today being a multilevel organization with ties to the United States Government and overseen in full by the United States Department of Agriculture of which provides the Land Grants for the Universities which organize the regional or State 4-H programs.  From here it continues on its downward slope to the County Extension office which oversees several programs under the Land Grants not just 4-H.  In King County, the program only has a few Administrators and within the past year has moved into yet another, smaller office space, in which these few paid staff along with a couple of dozen dedicated 4-H leaders (all volunteer) and hundreds of dedicated parents make the local clubs work.  In a system steeped heavily with the traditional Top-Down model, King County 4-H wants desperately to begin a Bottom-Up or the more popular term within the US: Grassroots approach to securing County Council (local government) support.   Given this particular network, I have essentially been trying to “make room [for me] to breathe” within an organization in which I was once an insider, a member, a mentor and now I am more on the outside than I would like to be (Shevellar 2010).  I suppose years of being mostly detached from the organization trying to make my life happen took that bit away from me.  Now, I struggle with a few “gatekeepers” to work my way in, to “seek a sponsor” so to speak and to develop a support group within this organization in which to build collective action upon (Shevellar 2010).  I am essentially to break into what in now a “closed structure” to me.  As in my fifth SWSP7123 lecture of 2010, I am trying to “work towards openness” (Shevellar 2010).  I’m trying to ask questions that people are nervous to speak of at this point in time, despite knowing that they need to address these issues as quickly as possible to keep the program operating for at least one more year within King County.  Fellow 4-Her’s, parents, volunteers and former 4-Her’s rose to the challenge in the fall of 2009 to rally, right letters and literally protest in a highly public venue, paying attention to notify media all at the last minute when it looked like the program may not receive Council support and funding for one more year.  It worked!  But an initiative within the local County organization was begun to being creating a response in place for the longer term and for the more immediate coming year of 2010.  Unfortunately, the economic decline, the threat of flooding locally, in addition to a simple unwillingness to speak of what makes everyone uncomfortable, so consequently, the social forum that was created via Facebook for ideas to be shared and work towards finding a solution was to begin has stalled in favor of a cork message board for club events and leadership training but no message of “Saving 4-H” is mentioned otherwise. 

Where do I fit?

I see myself trying to step aside and respect those I am working with as much as possible but where do we draw the line and begin to take matters into our own hands? Where do I draw the line?

To be continued….

Shevellar, Lynda. (2010).  Unpublished work.  Workshop 5:  Practices [Powerpoint slides]. University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.

Shevellar, Lynda. (2010).  Unpublished work.  Workshop 1, Session A: Introduction to the Course [Powerpoint slides]. University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.

Photo is shared through flickr via the national 4-H website for public use.  For verification please see www.4-H.org.