I love playing games because they allow more opportunities for me to actually learn and broaden my perspective. One thing that really resonated with me was the Puppet game. I personally liked being the puppet more than I liked being the puppeteer. This can be applied to my real life as well and how I would interact in an organization.
I like being a follower, which is weird because I am really opinionated, independent, and tend to have major trust issues in group projects. At the same time, I am not a big fan of the responsibility, creativity, and confrontation.
I feel that in an organization, I would not be the one to IMAGINE change. I would tend to be the person who would talk about the changes to the people around me, however, I would want other people to take the reins.
Honestly, I think there needs to be people that are followers to really make an organization work. If everyone is trying to push their own ideas, there won't be anyone to muster support from. Every organization needs a working base, people that are passionate to help the change but don't want to be the one to initiate it and that is what I imagine myself doing.
Observation: New Jersey Association of the Deaf-Blind Inc. changed its name to Everas Community Services and their mission statement to allow more services to be provided to more people.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Blog 3: Go Greek or Go for Justice
So I was scrolling through my Facebook news feed and I saw that one of my friends had posted a picture of a new sorority that she had joined. At first I was proud of my friend for getting into the sorority. Then it hit me, there were over 50 white girls in this picture. There was not a single African American women in this picture. From the looks of the picture, there were no woman of Indian, Middle Eastern, Asian or Latina decent in the picture.
That is hardly a coincidence. And that, my friends, is not okay.
One excuse that popped in my head was, "Well, maybe people of other ethnicity just didn't want to be in a sorority." Yup, there was my white privilege waving it's ugly head again. Even if that was the case, it has more to do with the white culture pushing out anyone that didn't have the "right" look especially in the Greek world.
The Greek world encompasses many different boxes that one has to fit in to be apart of. For example sororities require people to fit in the woman, heterosexual, white box. Fraternities are all about the heterosexual and male boxes. It is so frustrating that this sense of brotherhood/sisterhood is not made widely available to every person that steps foot on our campus.
Observation 2:
There is a bill proposed to cut 40 billion dollars in funding to the SNAP program.
That is hardly a coincidence. And that, my friends, is not okay.
One excuse that popped in my head was, "Well, maybe people of other ethnicity just didn't want to be in a sorority." Yup, there was my white privilege waving it's ugly head again. Even if that was the case, it has more to do with the white culture pushing out anyone that didn't have the "right" look especially in the Greek world.
The Greek world encompasses many different boxes that one has to fit in to be apart of. For example sororities require people to fit in the woman, heterosexual, white box. Fraternities are all about the heterosexual and male boxes. It is so frustrating that this sense of brotherhood/sisterhood is not made widely available to every person that steps foot on our campus.
Observation 2:
There is a bill proposed to cut 40 billion dollars in funding to the SNAP program.
Friday, September 13, 2013
Blog 2: Covert Operations
So I was reading the section called "Covert Operations" (page 211) in our book. I got an icky feeling when I was reading this section. Yes, I realize that this is something that would occur after one tried other ways of change. I just personally don't think that being dishonest (well, selectively honest) and sneaky is the way to create change.
From my personal experience of being a teenage girl for a third of my life, being sneaky and selectively telling the truth does not create change and freedom, it gets you grounded. And on an ethical, moral level, I feel like if you have to outwardly manipulate people to create change, then that should NOT be the environment that you work in.
I just absolutely LOVED that Professor Rhodes was very clear that we don't have to work in the organization to create change and good. We can choose to remove ourselves from the organization so that we can fight a good and honest fight. In my opinion, it seems foolish to fight corruption with more corruption.
I realize that not everyone feels as strongly about this as I do. But I thin a major part of being a social worker is remaining true to your values. We place such a high emphasis on the values of our clients, but our internal values and beliefs are important as well, especially in an organization.
From my personal experience of being a teenage girl for a third of my life, being sneaky and selectively telling the truth does not create change and freedom, it gets you grounded. And on an ethical, moral level, I feel like if you have to outwardly manipulate people to create change, then that should NOT be the environment that you work in.
I just absolutely LOVED that Professor Rhodes was very clear that we don't have to work in the organization to create change and good. We can choose to remove ourselves from the organization so that we can fight a good and honest fight. In my opinion, it seems foolish to fight corruption with more corruption.
I realize that not everyone feels as strongly about this as I do. But I thin a major part of being a social worker is remaining true to your values. We place such a high emphasis on the values of our clients, but our internal values and beliefs are important as well, especially in an organization.
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Observation 2: Public Health
Measles are on the rise, over 150 cases so far this year. Nearly 2/3 of the cases of measles come from communities that do not vaccinate their children.
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
Blog Post 1: The Price of Charity
I was sitting in the car with my parents the other day. Let me give you some background on my parents, they are both white, Christian, heterosexual, middle-class republicans. My father is the COO (chief operating officer) of an international company. My mother is a biblical counselor.
Anyways, we are sitting in the car and my father brings up an article that he read about how the CEO of Goodwill makes about $750,000 a year. My mother's response was that she couldn't believe someone trying to help others would make so much money. (Side note: Here is the link to the article my father was talking about. The article really had nothing to do with his specific salary and we did have a discussion about the true issue of the article which was why was Goodwill paying disabled people so much less than minimum wage)
My mothers response (I'll be honest, I had that gut reaction at first too) is so indicative of our culture. In the TED talk we listened to, Dan Pallotta talked about how our culture thinks it is perfectly okay for people of random companies like Google or FaceBook to make hundreds of thousands of dollars in a salary, yet it is seen as outrageously unfair for people who are actually helping others and making a difference in the world to make that kind of money for a salary. Our culture calls them "offenders" and tells people not to donate to these companies according to this monstrosity.
I don't think that this aspect of our culture will change in the near future, but I hope that people who work in and are in charge of non-profits will be able to make livable wages like the people who are only out there to serve themselves.
Observation about Communities:
A kid from my high school was killed. The town/school/alumni showed their support and community by wearing blue and writing the number 33 on their wrists.
Anyways, we are sitting in the car and my father brings up an article that he read about how the CEO of Goodwill makes about $750,000 a year. My mother's response was that she couldn't believe someone trying to help others would make so much money. (Side note: Here is the link to the article my father was talking about. The article really had nothing to do with his specific salary and we did have a discussion about the true issue of the article which was why was Goodwill paying disabled people so much less than minimum wage)
My mothers response (I'll be honest, I had that gut reaction at first too) is so indicative of our culture. In the TED talk we listened to, Dan Pallotta talked about how our culture thinks it is perfectly okay for people of random companies like Google or FaceBook to make hundreds of thousands of dollars in a salary, yet it is seen as outrageously unfair for people who are actually helping others and making a difference in the world to make that kind of money for a salary. Our culture calls them "offenders" and tells people not to donate to these companies according to this monstrosity.
I don't think that this aspect of our culture will change in the near future, but I hope that people who work in and are in charge of non-profits will be able to make livable wages like the people who are only out there to serve themselves.
Observation about Communities:
A kid from my high school was killed. The town/school/alumni showed their support and community by wearing blue and writing the number 33 on their wrists.
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