College students as catalysts for social change: a case study

Make a Difference Tour

The preparation includes orientation sessions held on campus prior to the trip. It also includes the compilation of a binder given to each participant for every city on that tour. The information includes a history and background of the communities being served, including demographics and rates of poverty. Each site is also contacted beforehand and is required to meet with the group to give a background explanation of their mission and vision, and why the project is important and makes a difference.

The action comes from the actual service which can range from working at a Ronald McDonald house to a nursing home or an environmental project. Whatever the community being served has identified as a need is what the group is willing to do. SLP intentionally tries to provide a wide range of opportunities for the students on the trip as not everyone resonates with the same thing. One of the trip participants called it a “buffet of service.” Roy used the term “buffet line” and shared his beliefs about the advantages of this type of broad exposure.

You meet more people’s potential needs because they have different opportunities to serve with different types of organizations. You serve in five organizations that serve youth in a completely different way in a week, you can kind of build some general themes and you can build some differences and best practices.

The group integrates reflection in several ways. They assign each person an accountability partner to spend time each evening processing the day’s events. The trip binder also includes blank pages and students are encouraged to journal about their experience. In addition each night there is intentional large group time with discussions regarding the experiences of the day and what impact it had on their life. This is also the time when “Yeah, Buddies” are given to each other as affirmation for an action or attitude. The evening sessions are very intentional about personal development exercises. The sharing and exercises are done in the context of the participants on the bus, usually 25-45 College or high school students and several adult volunteers. The activities are led initially by the bus core and then others on the trip are encouraged and supported to take over and provide leadership. This is part of the intentionality of revealing leadership and empowerment. Before the trip ends individuals are encouraged to commit to local action and invited to participate at the SLP chapter level.

The final aspect of the PARC model is the celebration which takes place in the “Celebration City.” Another offshoot of the celebration gathering is the realization that you are part of something larger than yourself. Pete puts it this way:

We come together to celebrate something and have this shared common goal together. This sense of we just spent you know five-six days with 40 people but when you see everybody else you realize, OK, everyone else did the same thing. And you know all of the stories that you can tell and the fact that you don’t even know all of the stories that they can tell gives you this feeling like, who knows what happened this week? Who knows what we were a part of, because we will never know.

Individual bus core leaders are given responsibility and also a great deal of autonomy to initiate and create as local leaders, not just deliver a franchised product. Nickers explained, “It’s having that happy balance between telling them versus allowing them to experience it.” However, the founders do become concerned if the bus core leadership varies from some of the main design features of the trip, as illustrated in the next example from one of my observations.

A discussion was held about a group planning a trip that wanted to do a short bus ride of only three hours travel time. The National core provides some travel guidelines that say the following: “Maximum travel time of seven hours per day (suggested travel time of no more than six hours)” (MAD DRAFT Guidelines). Mackenzie commented that the bus ride is program down time and that there is a study somewhere that said college students need to have a certain amount of ‘down time.’ Roy commented, “We need to state a case as to why we would want it to be a longer trip back, and if we don’t have a case then we let them do it.” To this Pete said, “I wish we had all of these studies that we could just pull to prove this” and Roy commented, “Yes, but it probably wouldn’t say eight hours is better than four hours.” An issue that came up in observing the group is that they created this experience and now struggle to find research or studies to document what experientially has worked for them. This is becoming much more of an issue due to outside pressure for funding and legitimizing what the organization does.

Individual Qualities

In addition to the information shared about the individual founders, there are some commonalities of experiences and influences that are qualities of the individual founders and have influenced the formation of SLP. The first theme identified in this study is that the founders were shaped by individual experiences including strong familial influences. In terms of high school experiences, all four were in the honor society and active in student government. Roy and Pete were involved at the regional or state level. This gave them an understanding of how to coordinate and network on a broader level, skills they continue to utilize today. All three men attended a Rotary Youth Leadership Association (RYLA) leadership camp where Roy and Pete met. All four interned at the Minnesota state capital. Mackenzie was also involved in retreats, as was mentioned earlier. All four come from intact families with three of the four being the youngest child.

All of the four founders volunteered in their high school years, but none had required service. In college, only Pete and Roy had a service learning class the first semester of their freshman year, but neither of them felt it was very significant. SLP does incorporate a very strong service learning model into the MAD tour.

All four founders are graduates of a prestigious School of Business which is ranked among the nation’s best, most competitive business schools. All four graduated with a 3.0 GPA or higher. Being in the business school has given the founders access to business leaders within the community that has furthered the organization. This will be discussed in more detail under the networking section. The business school also has a nation-wide reputation so having this business degree has legitimized the founders at least within certain circles. The education they received also allowed them to use SLP as a “project” for many of their courses, thereby furthering the organization with the oversight of skilled faculty. The founders’ intelligence and dedication may be exemplified by the fact that the founders all graduated within four years maintaining a solid GPA while in a competitive environment.

Thirty-eight percent of students worry about having too much student loan debt (Hart Survey, 2007). This worry is something that the founders do not exhibit as all four graduated debt free. This was achieved by working during college or in the summers, scholarships, and financial support from their middle class families. This has allowed them financial freedom to pursue their SLP dream.

Other experiences have also shaped who they are and the leadership they bring to the group. Mackenzie, Roy and Pete have all traveled and studied abroad. Mackenzie talks about the impact of travel, “We all have definite correlations with social awareness and…travel.” She goes on to share some advice she had received from her cousin, “He was like, you will never know who you are until you have completely separated yourself from everything you have ever known. I truly do believe that, and so I think travel, especially international travel, cause’ you don’t have your email, you don’t have your text messages.”

Roy and Peter were Community Assistants (equivalent of a Resident Assistant, RA), and Mackenzie served as an RA for a summer leadership program. This gave them additional leadership experience working with groups of students as part of a system. SLP has been contracted to work with a summer leadership program that the University now runs and Mackenzie’s earlier experiences have proven useful.

All four founders are from intact families. Pete and Nickers mom’s stayed home with them when they were young. When Pete’s mom got a job it was at the school that he attended so she was available to attend all his school events. Mackenzie’s father stayed home as “Mr. Mom”, while Roy’s mom only worked part-time when he was growing up. I believe this family influence had an impact on the extra-curricular involvement of the founders as they all had two parents living together with one as the primary care giver to support their participation.

All of them mentioned church and faith as significant factors in their leadership development. DiPaolo (2004) found the role of religion and religious education as an early dynamic in terms of motivation (p. 39). Pete and Mackenzie both attended religious schools while growing up. Pete, through 6th grade, and Mackenzie her entire K-12 experience. In a U.S. Department of Education (2008) study the proportion of high school seniors who felt that religion was 'very important' in their lives was 32% in 2001. Yet faith was a factor for all of the founders.

All of these influences impacted the individual founders and who they are as leaders. Another shared quality they have is their belief in what they are doing. One of the bus core leaders said this about the four: “I think that’s one thing that they all share--they completely believe 100% in what they are doing.”