Organize is the second Category of Action in { We Speak America }.  

“To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it. Once named, the world reappears to the namers as a problem and requires of them a new naming.” – Paulo Freire.

What creates social change?  The National Institute for Literacy’s (NIFL) Equipped for the Future presents three role maps in its content standards to help meet the needs of adult learners:  citizen/community member, worker, and parent/family member.  Naturally, an improvement in adult learners’ worklife will impact their families, and eventually, their communities.    In the same token, communities have a role to play in assuring the advancement of their members.  While that’s easier said than done, proven strategies can be employed to ascertain the participation of stakeholders within a community. 

{ We Speak America } is taking a community approach to education, by targetting groups of workers within selected communities.  it will create a profile of each target community by studying its economic and social structures.   What are the traps that have kept them in the lowest rung of the economic ladder?  Who are the stakeholders that can help them move up?

Thus, in the same spirit of Equipped for the Future, { We Speak America } will go above and beyond the world of individual adult learners, and partner with the community stakeholders around them:  faith-based institutions, businesses, libraries, schools, CBOs and NPOs, and government.   Education cannot be done in isolation.  

Toward Self-emPOWERment

Self-empowerment is losing its meaning in communities.  It is overused, overrated, overexposed.   It can be found in the endless and hollow political rhetoric.   Going back to the root of the word–POWER–will remind us what the issue is about for marginalized communities: the lack of power.

Organizing is about finding that POWER.   Finding the source of power WITHIN is the first step.   Is culture the source of power? Is education? Is work?  While there are many ways to empower oneself, for { We Speak America }, it means preparing adult learners for sustainable employment, where they can be full functioning contributors of our American democracy.

POWER is there.  The task at hand is to turn on the switches of power in  adult learners and giving them the necessary tools to do the same for others. The cycle of oppression can be turned on its head.    

Identify Stakeholders

Is educating an adult learner enough?  Too often, in adult education programs, education begins when adult learners walk in the door and ends when they walk out of the facilities.    If they quit, they get crossed out of the rolls, and when they are recycled back to the programs, they miraculously appear in the classrooms, nary a concern about patterns, histories, and futures.

Think of communities, big and small.   Imagine their ecosystem.   Every person is connected to others in a web of functionality.    If parts of that web are severed, the whole network will eventually fall apart.   Strengthening the American workforce means creating an infrastructure that has a strong foundation at its core.   America is a knowledge-based economy.  The education and training of workers at the Bottom of the Pyramid is key to restoring the country’s economic and financial solidity. 

In every community, there are stakeholders in an adult learners’ lives.  They may not know it because they have been marginalized for so long.    

Build Partnerships

“We must fight so that these rights are not just recognized but respected and implemented.  At times we may need to fight side by side with the unions; at other times we may need to fight against them, if their leadership is sectarian, whether right or left. “  – Paolo Freire, Teachers as Cultural Workers

A community of dissent should be encouraged.  Hidden issues can be uncovered from people and used to inspire innovative ideas.   America’s long tradition of divide and conquer among communities and peoples sometimes get in the way of organizing.   The bilateral either/or tend to focus too much on paternalism and not on creating new partnerships.   In creating teams, it’s important to consider all parties as potential partners.   Businesses may not be so inclined to participate in such ventures (given the reputation that low-wage workers are disposable in a meritocracy).  However, these businesses could very well benefit a lot from a knowledgeable base of workers.  In building partnerships, the scope of community around an adult learner should include a wide range of stakeholders, including those whose sentiment may not be favorable at that moment.   Remember, change is constant.  Unfavorable today, favorable tomorrow.    Roles switch, people change.    Democracy is built on that premise.

Create Lifelong Learning

Are there exit doors in education?  The old paradigms tell us that there are,   final milestones decorated with ceremonies, photographs, and new paper credentials. 

In { We Speak America }, the new paradigm of learning is generative.  There are no bottoms, no ends.   Lifelong learners are not just the adult learners themselves, they are the educators, the community organizers, and the organizational stakeholders.    Creating a community of learners that has no bounds is the ultimate goal.    From here, we leverage.   One community at a time.

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[  Thank you for visiting.   This section will continue to improve and expand in the next few months.  ]

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