Customizable Mass Production

Customizable Mass Production

Customizable mass production, we want the phone that is cool, that everyone has, but we want it to look like it is only our phone. We want to be part of something bigger; we want to be one of four hundred people cleaning up that river. But I’m still an individual, I still have an identity as one person--we want both extremes. Customizable mass production is…what we try to do with our trips. That is why you get to choose your t-shirt and your color and your own bus, but really I mean every trip: give me a night of the week and I will tell you what our trip leaders should do and where your bus should be energy wise.

In speaking about this particular generation of students, Harold, SLP’s former advisor, mentions a similar term:

That sense of mass customization they are used to having things really tailored to them. So these are the kinds of things I want to do, I don’t see other people doing them so let’s make up an organization to do it. Rather than I’m kind of here-- that’s pretty close--let me go and join that. They are used to having things kind of tailored…if their desktop doesn’t look the way they want it they can make it any way they want it, they rearrange their world, they are used to being able to manipulate things.

Ashley, one of the college volunteers I interviewed talked about her SLP experience:

I went on a Make a Difference tour as a participant and then just kind of fell in love with the whole idea, met amazing people, had an experience really similar to what other people talk about but it is still kind of your own personalized experience.

This mass customization is seen in the template of the trip with the basic format being the same but each bus can customize by choosing their own routes, themes, t-shirts, and volunteer projects so there is ownership with the trip and as Ashley stated it becomes your own personalized experience. I believe this is an important programmatic element of SLP because it fits the characteristics of this generation and works to create personal commitment.

In a training handout from the winter retreat SLP talks about the millennial characteristics of the students it works with. The following is excerpted from this training piece:

Certain messages have been present their entire lives [millennial students]. SLP’s messages coincide with these, which is good because of buy-in. However, SLP must learn to differentiate and strengthen these messages to attract and retain the messages are: Smart and Special-You can do it because you have the skills. The world will often cater to your needs by specializing products and services for you.

SLP takes this awareness of their “market” and the characteristics of the students to promote their program. They use this knowledge to train the student leadership. The business background of the founders was evident in terminology that was used in this training handout such as “distinct target market.”

Another issue of the mass customization is that it also gives participants a sense of being part of something bigger than themselves. The students gather in the Celebration Cities and see all of the other students that were involved in their own personal experience, yet contributing to the “common good.”

Along with the service learning model SLP has also realized that part of their program falls in the field of experiential education. Mackenzie explains, “As we do SLP we didn’t realize that we were doing experiential education and we never put a name to it but that’s what we’re doing, we do everything workshop based, discussion, etc, etc.” SLP’s experiential model has been compared with Outward Bound. Just as Outward Bound started out as a program and has evolved into a process I believe that something similar is happening with SLP. It started out as a program based on the MAD tour and has been growing and spreading to other campuses, age groups and types of programs. Walsh and Golins (1976) state:

A process exists as a generalized series of conditions, events and objects which interact to produce a desired effect. A program, on the other hand, is a distillation of the process. It exists as a specific set of activities, sequence of events, for a specific population, which is limited in space and time (p. 1-2).

What SLP is evolving into is a process that can be applied to broader audiences and in different “containers” in the future such as camps and work with other populations and age groups. That is part of how the founders see the organization eventually going on without them.

Challenging the Comfort Zone

SLP challenges its participants personally, physically and emotionally. “A personal hope would be just that they’re willing to kinda step outside their comfort zone, and just be willing to be open” shared Nickers. Mackenzie talks about stretching the physical and personal comfort zones of students.

We’re probably one of the only products in the world that does not need 100% satisfaction. If your back hurts because you slept on the floor, oh you’re stretching your comfort zone. If you felt uncomfortable because of you know, you were at National Student Partnership…well you are learning something different.

National Student Partnership works primarily in large, urban cities and the students that volunteer there are usually asked to go out into the streets to promote the program. During one of the trips I participated on this was mentioned as one of the most challenging experiences for some students, especially those from rural areas. Other projects such as volunteering at a homeless shelter, domestic abuse center or an Alzheimer unit introduces students to issues and puts faces with them which increases the impact. These experiences support Bandura’s (1997) vicarious observation identified as an important mode of influence for self-efficacy in leadership.

Taking students out of their familiar environments and introducing them to new experiences and places out of their ordinary lives is part of the effectiveness of the MAD tour. Outward Bound uses a similar methodology and explains why it is effective.

The prescribed physical environment necessary to an Outward Bound experience is really nothing other than one the learner is not familiar with. Contrast is the key concept here. Contrast is used to see generality which tends to be overlooked by human beings in a familiar environment or to gain a new perspective on the old, familiar environment from which the learner comes. The learner’s entry into a contrasting environment is the first step towards reorganizing the meaning and direction of his experience (Walsh & Golin, 1976, p. 4).

By taking students on a cross-country bus tour SLP puts students into situations that they are not familiar with. Students go into various communities, some inner-city and some very small, that may contrast with their own background. Through the various volunteer sites students are also challenged and moved outside their comfort zones. All of these factors provide the contrast proposed by Walsh and Golin. The reflection that happens during the evening group time allows them to process these various experiences to maximize the impact.

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