In the film, 12 Angry Men, a jury of men must decide the fate of a boy convicted of murder in the first degree. While the narrative and sophistication of the crime suffice to compensate for the cost of the movie rental, the role of power within the film adds an extra layer of analyze that pushes beyond the scope of the court trial and provides a framework for looking at various struggles of power.
In the film, elven of the twelve men of the jury believe the defendant to be "guilty". And for good reason: the abundant evidence seems to prove a guilty motive and flimsy motive. Yet, the one maverick asks an important question: "How are we sure?" There always exists a possibility, however improbable, that the young boy hasn't committed the crime given the circumstantial evidence. This question the one man asks is critical: by questioning the norm of acquiescence, he stimulates conversation and real debate regarding the trial. In psychology, this norm exemplifies a social phenomenon all groups face-- group think. According to social psychology, group think is the progression of a group into a more polarized ideology of one point of view instead of included more diverse opinions.
Losing voices in group discussion seems counterintuitive-- as it should. In our curriculum, students learn to break away from "groupthink" by refusing to accept ideas as facts and instead thinking of them as working models for a solution. One of weeks, cooperation and teamwork, students gain exposure to the driving force of "groupthink" by trying to solve a problem together. Immediately, the teachers noted the conversations moving towards a solidified idea or initial concepts. Although this signals progress, the teachers emphasized the need to ask more questions and be critical about the reasoning used to justify the propositions offered. While slower, this investigative discussion ensures that great ideas are set free-- and weaker ones are found guilt of groupthink.
Your Social Outreach Team!
[FDM]
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
Leadership as sacrifice and inspiration
[Click on title to watch video]
In this clip, Desmond Tutu, 1984 Nobel Peace Prize Winner outlines what he believes to be the key qualities of leadership. What I found most interesting from the qualities he mentions is the idea of a leader as someone who sacrifices, even suffers, for the sake of the people that he leads. This means that as leaders, we some times need to venture out of our comfort zones in order to make a real difference. Many great leaders have risked their lives for their causes, many have put their lives on halt for their causes. If the time comes for us to do that to make a difference, would we be willing to do so? Or will we rationalize so that we maintain comfortable ways of life?
Servant leadership, indeed, has a lot to do with sacrifice.
[Posted by Dalumuzi H. Mhlanga for Social Outreach team]
In this clip, Desmond Tutu, 1984 Nobel Peace Prize Winner outlines what he believes to be the key qualities of leadership. What I found most interesting from the qualities he mentions is the idea of a leader as someone who sacrifices, even suffers, for the sake of the people that he leads. This means that as leaders, we some times need to venture out of our comfort zones in order to make a real difference. Many great leaders have risked their lives for their causes, many have put their lives on halt for their causes. If the time comes for us to do that to make a difference, would we be willing to do so? Or will we rationalize so that we maintain comfortable ways of life?
Servant leadership, indeed, has a lot to do with sacrifice.
[Posted by Dalumuzi H. Mhlanga for Social Outreach team]
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Yes We Can Lead! Video
Click on the title for the video!
The Yes We Can Lead! Leadership Program is looking to change the world one child at a time. This is a video documenting our visions and goals for the future.
The Yes We Can Lead! Leadership Program is looking to change the world one child at a time. This is a video documenting our visions and goals for the future.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Fight for Your Right
This evening, the members of the Social Outreach Team met with one mission in mind: to realize the vision and expand the reach of what we have so appropriately named "Yes We Can Lead!" But we accomplished this through a somewhat unconventional medium. We found ourselves creating a video that we would later enter into a fundraising competition.
This got me thinking about the universality of human capacity. Each of us, no matter what it is that we have identified as a personal forte, is capable of setting a goal and meeting it. The only prerequisite for following through with a mission is being equipped with the desire and persistence that is conducive to success.
And on that note, I would like to emphasize the utility of any talent and the potential of even any curiosity to engender progress. There are so many different means through which we can unite to improve our society. Let us consider the German Expressionists of the early 20th century. These individuals, after being forced to risk their lives in the trenches of World War I, used art as a means to endorse the creation of a post-war democratic government. Architects, artists, and musicians alike were called to take up their pencils, brushes, and instruments as weapons for change. Now, in the beginning of the 21st century, I incite you all to internalize the example of these visionaries. This time, not so much for the regeneration of a greater Germany, but for the building of a better society. I call you to arms. Take up your weapon, and fight for change.
We'll see you when the war is over...
Yours Truly,
The Social Outreach Regiment
[Posted by Ujunwa Anakwenze]
This got me thinking about the universality of human capacity. Each of us, no matter what it is that we have identified as a personal forte, is capable of setting a goal and meeting it. The only prerequisite for following through with a mission is being equipped with the desire and persistence that is conducive to success.
And on that note, I would like to emphasize the utility of any talent and the potential of even any curiosity to engender progress. There are so many different means through which we can unite to improve our society. Let us consider the German Expressionists of the early 20th century. These individuals, after being forced to risk their lives in the trenches of World War I, used art as a means to endorse the creation of a post-war democratic government. Architects, artists, and musicians alike were called to take up their pencils, brushes, and instruments as weapons for change. Now, in the beginning of the 21st century, I incite you all to internalize the example of these visionaries. This time, not so much for the regeneration of a greater Germany, but for the building of a better society. I call you to arms. Take up your weapon, and fight for change.
We'll see you when the war is over...
Yours Truly,
The Social Outreach Regiment
[Posted by Ujunwa Anakwenze]
Friday, April 9, 2010
On Outreach and methods
This week millons of citizens share one thing in common: they need to fill out the Census form. As we know, filling out the Census form is important for political representation and federal resources, such as trash collection, public transportation, and education funds to public schools. Numerous organizations on campus are busy phone-banking, canvassing, and general raising awareness. Raising awareness for this decade's census differs significantly from the tools used in the first Census administrations. In Social Outreach we encourage our students to tease out the different avenues for raising awareness and how to approach the differences in those avenues.
Facebook, for example, provides a great method to reaching your closest friends in a quick manner: by enabling users to contact people they have met personally, Facebook allows high response rates. However, most of social outreach focuses on expanding or creating a social program or volunteer organization. While Facebook and other social network sites provide the best method to recruit members, reaching organizations is done the same way now as it was 20, 30, 50 years ago-- letters.
Our middle school children learn quickly that sending e-mails or, better yet, sending hand written messages, require diligence and constant editing. In our speech making week we point out three distinct questions that students should answer when sending letter format messages: why us? why you? why now?
First, students must pitch their cause and explain what issue they are addressing and why they are trying to address it. Second, students ingratiate their audience by discussing how the person or organization can help them in their cause. This method of "why you?" also discusses why that particular organization would be the best one to assist in the student's goal. Finally, the "why now?" question mainly deals with the necessity to act quickly to advance the student's goal. These three questions, instead of limiting the students, provide a great outline from which they can expand and better achieve their goals.
Interestingly, in Homer's Iliad, Odysseus mirrors this method in his speech meant to persuade Achilles to re-enter the Trojan war. Odysseus answers why the Greeks must win the war, why Achilles must fight, and why refusal would put all the Greeks in danger. While I hope our students will not need this method of letter composition for war, I hope they remember that antiquated tactics never lose their shimmer.
Your Social Outreach Team
Post by: FDM
Facebook, for example, provides a great method to reaching your closest friends in a quick manner: by enabling users to contact people they have met personally, Facebook allows high response rates. However, most of social outreach focuses on expanding or creating a social program or volunteer organization. While Facebook and other social network sites provide the best method to recruit members, reaching organizations is done the same way now as it was 20, 30, 50 years ago-- letters.
Our middle school children learn quickly that sending e-mails or, better yet, sending hand written messages, require diligence and constant editing. In our speech making week we point out three distinct questions that students should answer when sending letter format messages: why us? why you? why now?
First, students must pitch their cause and explain what issue they are addressing and why they are trying to address it. Second, students ingratiate their audience by discussing how the person or organization can help them in their cause. This method of "why you?" also discusses why that particular organization would be the best one to assist in the student's goal. Finally, the "why now?" question mainly deals with the necessity to act quickly to advance the student's goal. These three questions, instead of limiting the students, provide a great outline from which they can expand and better achieve their goals.
Interestingly, in Homer's Iliad, Odysseus mirrors this method in his speech meant to persuade Achilles to re-enter the Trojan war. Odysseus answers why the Greeks must win the war, why Achilles must fight, and why refusal would put all the Greeks in danger. While I hope our students will not need this method of letter composition for war, I hope they remember that antiquated tactics never lose their shimmer.
Your Social Outreach Team
Post by: FDM
Monday, April 5, 2010
Serving or Saving?
Tomorrow, the Social Outreach team will be going to Edwards Middle School to present a lesson on Servant Leadership. Indeed, this reflects on the Leadership Institute's view of leadership as an act of "doing something bigger than yourself" (as Reid says in yesterday's blog post). That is something that we hope the children we have been teaching this whole term have come to appreciate, and tomorrow, we hope to consolidate this lesson.
However, I feel that it is very easy for us to profess servant leadership, and practice a form which is counter-productive. Many times people engage in activities where they believe themselves to be serving others. I fear that if not understood correctly, we may end up locking ourselves in a cycle of spoon feeding the people we hope to serve with pre-conceived solutions. In our enthusiasm to engage in servant leadership, we may laboriously figure out ways in which we can intervene in the communities of disadvantaged people with specific solutions to their specific problems. That way, we can find ourselves "saving" these people instead of serving them: we would, in our self-righteousness, provide solutions to the disadvantaged. And that way, we would be no better than the selfish leader because at the end of it all, this saving approach fulfills our egotistic desires.
I do not find "saving" to be a viable form of leadership. My understanding of leadership is that it is used to empower the people who are "led". The intellect and resources of the people are used to give rise to the change that the people who are led seek. To me, leadership is not serving through imposing (which is saving), it is serving through learning. As servant leaders, we need to be careful not to impose our ideals and ideas on others. We need to be willing to listen, learn and work hand-in-hand with the people who we "lead". Most of the times, these people have the answers to their own problems. We can serve these people by learning with them and bringing to the conscious realm these solutions that they have.
And I believe this is what Social Outreach is doing. Yes, we do have a curriculum. But it is a curriculum that forms the basis for learning together with the young people with whom we interact. Still, we, like every other change-driven agency, need to be wary of the human propensity to pursue ego and undermine mission. We need to constantly self-critique and make sure that we are, indeed, serving and not simply saving.
[Posted by Dalumuzi Happy Mhlanga]
However, I feel that it is very easy for us to profess servant leadership, and practice a form which is counter-productive. Many times people engage in activities where they believe themselves to be serving others. I fear that if not understood correctly, we may end up locking ourselves in a cycle of spoon feeding the people we hope to serve with pre-conceived solutions. In our enthusiasm to engage in servant leadership, we may laboriously figure out ways in which we can intervene in the communities of disadvantaged people with specific solutions to their specific problems. That way, we can find ourselves "saving" these people instead of serving them: we would, in our self-righteousness, provide solutions to the disadvantaged. And that way, we would be no better than the selfish leader because at the end of it all, this saving approach fulfills our egotistic desires.
I do not find "saving" to be a viable form of leadership. My understanding of leadership is that it is used to empower the people who are "led". The intellect and resources of the people are used to give rise to the change that the people who are led seek. To me, leadership is not serving through imposing (which is saving), it is serving through learning. As servant leaders, we need to be careful not to impose our ideals and ideas on others. We need to be willing to listen, learn and work hand-in-hand with the people who we "lead". Most of the times, these people have the answers to their own problems. We can serve these people by learning with them and bringing to the conscious realm these solutions that they have.
And I believe this is what Social Outreach is doing. Yes, we do have a curriculum. But it is a curriculum that forms the basis for learning together with the young people with whom we interact. Still, we, like every other change-driven agency, need to be wary of the human propensity to pursue ego and undermine mission. We need to constantly self-critique and make sure that we are, indeed, serving and not simply saving.
[Posted by Dalumuzi Happy Mhlanga]
Sunday, April 4, 2010
"Do Something Bigger Than Yourself"
LIHC had the opportunity to host the United States Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus, this past weekend. We had over 250 people attend and it was a great event. Although it was amazing to hear about managing over 150 billion dollars and over 900,000 people, Secretary Mabus said something that had a much larger impact on me. Rather than talking about how great it is to be in politics or why we should all join the navy, he talked about service leadership.
Secretary Mabus discussed that we should all live life with a focus on "doing something bigger than yourself." He said that it doesn't matter where your interests lie, because there are opportunities to help others where ever you go. If you wake up every morning with the intention to help someone around you, it will in turn benefit you. Whether it be helping students in the Yes We Can Lead! program, or managing over 900,000 people in the Navy, we are all working to do something bigger than ourself. At the end of the day, this is what we will remember and be remembered for.
[Posted by Reid McCann]
Saturday, April 3, 2010
The Leadership Revolution
This past week has been one replete with meetings for those within the Leadership Institute. And in the midst of all of our conversations and presentations, I arrived at an illuminating thought that poses an answer to the question, “What would the world be like if all of its citizens were leaders?”
Now, I must admit that this question is seemingly anticlimactic. After all, everyone already knows that a world with leaders is a good thing. But I argue that the pervasiveness of this universal truth is the result of an unfortunately abstract understanding of leadership. Most of us, if not all of us, have had it pounded into our heads throughout childhood that we should not relegate ourselves to being perpetual followers. But I do not think that as children we all understood exactly why this is so.
So I return to the question posed above: “What would the world be like if all of its citizens were leaders?” If every single individual – young and old, man and woman, black and white, rich and poor – were a leader, each person would recognize his/her inherent claim to human agency, then realize the need for change and the potential for progress. Once this crucial step has been taken, all would be eager to take the initiative required to enact change.
Just envision this. In such a world, everyone, not just those with institutional power, would respond to acts of violence, human suffering, the need for a greener society, vast economic disparities, and all other forms of injustice. We would be so thoroughly incited to action that we simply would not be able to contain ourselves.
Leadership is a powerful, life-changing force. This is what the Social Outreach team strives to show this generation’s children. So as we endeavor to equip children with the confidence and capacity to lead, to take the world into their gentle little hands and mold it, I urge you to join the movement.
Yours Truly,
The Social Outreach Team
[Posted by Ujunwa Anakwenze]
Now, I must admit that this question is seemingly anticlimactic. After all, everyone already knows that a world with leaders is a good thing. But I argue that the pervasiveness of this universal truth is the result of an unfortunately abstract understanding of leadership. Most of us, if not all of us, have had it pounded into our heads throughout childhood that we should not relegate ourselves to being perpetual followers. But I do not think that as children we all understood exactly why this is so.
So I return to the question posed above: “What would the world be like if all of its citizens were leaders?” If every single individual – young and old, man and woman, black and white, rich and poor – were a leader, each person would recognize his/her inherent claim to human agency, then realize the need for change and the potential for progress. Once this crucial step has been taken, all would be eager to take the initiative required to enact change.
Just envision this. In such a world, everyone, not just those with institutional power, would respond to acts of violence, human suffering, the need for a greener society, vast economic disparities, and all other forms of injustice. We would be so thoroughly incited to action that we simply would not be able to contain ourselves.
Leadership is a powerful, life-changing force. This is what the Social Outreach team strives to show this generation’s children. So as we endeavor to equip children with the confidence and capacity to lead, to take the world into their gentle little hands and mold it, I urge you to join the movement.
Yours Truly,
The Social Outreach Team
[Posted by Ujunwa Anakwenze]
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Let's Make the "I Can" Bug the "We Can" Epidemic
Kiran Bir Sethi's talk is just incredible! What I love is that it really puts the featured children on the same level as great figures of our time. Moreover, she shows how this empowerment process became systematic and replicable so it could infect all of India. When we reach out to kids and try to inspire them with the legends of Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King, Jr., we also need to inspire them with the stories of their peers so that they walk away utterly convinced that they are truly capable of enacting change.
Now I have a challenge for our team: can we make a similar epidemic happen in the U.S.? I think so, and I think we are definitely on the path to sweeping the nation. Keep following us on our journey!
All the best,
The Social Outreach Team
[posted by Sheba Mathew]
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