Questions for Community Organizations

Here are the questions we discussed in class to ask our community organizations:

1. Can you tell me a little bit about the work you do in Somerville? (Make sure you check out their website first too!)
   
2. How is your organization dealing with the economic downturn? Is it affecting your organization? What about the population that your organization serves?
   
3. In your opinion, what is the main economic need in Somerville?
4. We're trying to understand how people and organizations in Somerville are connected. What are the three most important partnerships you have -- OR -- the organizations you work most closely with?

Those are the ones I have notes for... If I missed any, leave it in a comment for everyone!

A couple things to remember:

• Contact your organizations on Thursday or Friday so they have plenty of time to respond
• Offer to contact them via phone if they prefer
  

Relevant to today's discussion:

The original starfish story, very popular among proponents of service:

Once a man was walking along a beach. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day. Off in the distance he could see a person going back and forth between the surf's edge and and the beach. Back and forth this person went. As the man approached he could see that there were hundreds of starfish stranded on the sand as the result of the natural action of the tide.

The man was stuck by the the apparent futility of the task. There were far too many starfish. Many of them were sure to perish. As he approached the person continued the task of picking up starfish one by one and throwing them into the surf.

As he came up to the person he said, "You must be crazy. There are thousands of miles of beach covered with starfish. You can't possibly make a difference." The person looked at the man. He then stooped down and pick up one more starfish and threw it back into the ocean. He turned back to the man and said, "It sure made a difference to that one!"

Some variants:

1. Once a man was walking along the beach, where he saw hundreds of stranded starfish. He said, "Starfish, what are you going to do to get yourselves off this beach?" The starfish replied, "There is nothing we can do. The natural action of the waves has deposited us here. It has always been thus, and thus shall it always be." The man said, "You are the ones you have been waiting for. Organize yourselves into a chain, pull yourselves back into the water, and then figure out a way to prevent this debacle from recurring." The starfish felt empowered, studied engineering, organized themselves into an effective construction crew, built a breakwater, and nothing as bad ever happened again.

2. Once on a beautiful day a man was walking along the beach when he saw another man going back and forth throwing simple echinoderms back into the ocean to save them. Over the course of a several hours, he saved about 3 percent of these brainless organisms, 47 percent of which were destined to die anyway due to their long exposure on the sand. Seagulls watched as this man reduced their main food source. Meanwhile, off in the distance, huge condos were being constructed on the fragile ecosystem thanks to lax environmental regulation. The first man, a developer, chuckled. It occurred to him that a good name for the massive casino he planned for this spot might be "The Starfish."

3. A man was walking down the beach, where he noticed a whole bunch of stranded starfish. He had read that starfish have market value, so he reached down to harvest one for his own profit. "Hands off, exploitative human," said a voice, which came from the very starfish he had touched. "We are not your property and we don't need your help getting back to the sea. We have second stomachs that can expand to engulf prey such as yourself when we are threatened. Come on, fellow asterazoa, let's use our hydraulic vascular systems to propel ourselves back into the watery global commons whence we came." The man watched slack-jawed as the starfish marched into the surf chanting, "Hey, hey, ho, ho, greedy humans have to go."

4. A big mean shark was swimming close to the shore, eating starfish. The little creatures decided to go up onto the beach for awhile, because they can lie in the sun for a few hours without drying out, and the shark would swim away. Then a manic do-gooder started throwing them back in, one by one. Each starfish that he threw in was immediately gulped down by the ravenous leviathan. Finally, a brave little starfish reached out a foot and tripped the man, who fell face down in the surf and was immediately swallowed whole by the shark. Sated at last, it swam away to sea.

Osher Life Long Learning Institute

This week I contacted the Osher Life Long Learning Institute, which is a part of Tufts. More specifically, I looked into the OLLLI's Community Ambassador's Program or CAP. Teachers and students in the Osher program have a wealth of knowledge on many interesting and practical issues. The CAP provides an opportunity for Osher participants to share their expertise with the community through functions, classes, and 'road shows.' I've been playing a bit of phone tag with the contact person for the program, but she said that tomorrow afternoon would be the best time to contact her. After I get more information, I will certainly post the Osher node to the map, and make any links.

I did not get any response from the Tufts Republicans, after multiple emails. I plan on seeing if there is anyone who I know that has more updated contact information for the group. I know the Tufts Dems plan on debating with them next week, so surely I can contact the Dems to get to the Republicans. Hopefully by the end of this week I'll have posted two new nodes, complete with links.

Tufts Neighborhood Service Fund

The Tufts Neighborhood Service Fund (TNSF) is a giving option for members of the Tufts community during the Community Appeal. The fund, now in its fourteenth year, is used to support our host communities and the important work being done by Tufts volunteers with community organizations in Medford, Somerville, Grafton and Boston's Chinatown. TNSF is a uniquely "Tufts" way to participate in the appeal. You will know that your contribution is assisting a local non-profit organization and have the added benefit of supporting active citizenship in the Tufts community as well.

Funds received during the campaign are held in a special account and awards are made by the TNSF board. Proposals are solicited from nonprofit community agencies where Tufts students, faculty and staff are volunteering in the community.

In December 2008, 26 programs and projects were granted awards. Your contribution will be fully tax-deductible and will go, in its entirety, to support community projects.

Directed vs. Nondirected Links

Barabasi makes a very important distinction when discussing networks: directed links versus nondirected links.

Directed links, he explains, is when A --> B --> C --> D, but it is not necessarily the same in reverse. The links only work when traveling one way. Nondirected links have the ability to complete the cycle, and also to reverse the steps as well.

I think this is an important distinction to make, because it affects how we perceive the strength and connectedness of networks. The network and linking of the Internet, for example, is a series of directed links, which means that while we can get from one page to any other page in 19 clicks, we can't necessarily take the same path back to where we started. Barabasi points out that this also occurs in biology with the foodchain.

Social networks are a series of nondirected links. By the mere fact that Person A has a relationship to Person B, Person B clearly knows Person A as well. (The biological translation of this, as Barabasi provides, would be protein interactions.)

Understanding the differences between directed and nondirected links within networks is an important consideration when establishing a new network, such as our YouthMap.

Tufts Literacy Corps

This week I interviewed someone from "Tufts Literacy Corps." This year's Tufts Literacy Corps includes 90 student members, who visit six community-based sites in Medford and Somerville, and work with roughly 300 children. Eighty-seven children have been paired with one-on-one tutors this year, and about 200 children work with TLC members in their classrooms, homework centers, through BookMatch and in an after school drama club. Their mission is to help all children succeed in school and gain a lifelong love of learning. This mission is very noble, and as I've said in my other posts, I feel that this group could be a potential. They could use their tutoring skills to educate younger children about important topics that would help them to perform better or reach higher levels of socioeconomic status. By doing this it would help the area of Somerville in the long term, but growth has to start somewhere.

What shall we call this project?

We are pretty close to launching a public social network, and therefore we need a name for this whole business--not just for our class, but for the Boston-area map and the tools that will allow students to interact with it in web 2.0. It won't be called "Youth Map," but what should it be?

Boston Area Civic Network
Boston Area Social Network
Boston Volunteer Net
Civic Net Boston
Boston Organizing Online Network (BOON)
Research, Activism, Change, and Community Organizing Online Network (RACCOON)

There have to be better ideas ....

Internet Archives

In this week's reading Bararbasi mentioned one of the coolest sites on the web: http://www.archive.org

I encourage everyone to take a minute to check it out because it will definitely make you view the web differently. I first visited the archives in middle school when I saw a link to the site on bored.com, and then proceeded to forget about it until last year when I was writing a large research paper on the Obama administration and Web 2.0 tools. By using the archives, I was able to access both the Clinton and Bush Whitehouse.gov pages for comparative purposes. The whole experience of using the archives to access this data reminded me what an important historical record the Internet is. As Bararbasi writes, "the Web's architecture is the product of two equally important layers: code and collective human actions taking advantage of the code." The construction of the web is a tangible recording of what users are feeling at that instance in time. This is a very unique world of information. Visiting the site, and checking out some old webpages will make you wonder how people will view what we are doing on the web (i.e. social networks) years later.

Strong Ties + Weak Ties

Reflecting on the "Linked" reading from last week, I am very interested in the importance and difference between strong ties and weak ties. I understand how weak ties can expand a network much faster than strong ties can, as each weak tie is a link to someone with a whole circle of strong ties. However, I think it is important to acknowledge that between the Tufts Student Organizations, this might not be as useful as we hope. In general, a weak tie opens a door to a whole new range of possible connections. With student organizations, ties are not so distinct as strong or weak. "Weak" ties on campus may include connections from the past, connections that were planned and never executed, and perhaps most frequently, connections that fizzled with time and student turnover. I know that we have discussed this in class, but I still find it important to mention.

I think that when we move into the larger Somerville community, the connections may become more concrete (maybe not, but that is my hope). Organizations, even with moderate turnover in staff or leadership will have some kind of institutional memory that many Tufts Student Organizations lack.

Tufts Energy Forum-Potential?

The Tufts Energy Forum is an organization under the umbrella of the IGL. It is an Undergraduate-centered that does a vast majority of its work within the Tufts campus of Somerville/Medford. Started only 5 years ago, it is a newer organization that has already undergone a name change from the Energy Security Initiative. The main goal of the group is to educate and raise awareness regarding energy use, energy conservation, energy politics and policy, energy markets and energy new-technology. The TEF holds discussions, panels, and speakers throughout the year on the Tufts campus. In addition, it holds an annual conference each year at Tufts regarding energy that draws over 400 people.

Now, this was a bit of a frustrating conversation for me. As I asked the first question, the person who I was talking with informed me that the TEF was definitely looking to work with the Somerville community. He then quickly followed that point up with the point that it was highly unlikely that they would though. He explained that most in the organization don't feel that they really need to expand outside the Tufts community right now. My frustration grew when he started explaining the type of things they do. He told me that they really focus on education and have a ton of contacts and relationship that they consistently tap into to get people to come talk to us, help out with initiatives, etc... They have strong partnerships with the IGL, the Young Entrepreneurs at Tufts, The Climate Solutions Institute, FLECK (Fletcher's energy group) and CIERP at Fletcher which is headed by Professor Mooma. Yet, when I pressed him in trying to figure out what they could offer the community with these great services and opportunities, he reiterated that they were really just focused on Tufts and exploring the possibility of working outside of our own community.

I think that they are missing a huge opportunity to grow not only their organization at Tufts, but to really expand their impact in their ultimate goal. I don't understand why they wouldn't offer the Somerville community the opportunity to come and educate themselves on whatever energy topic they may be talking about, teaching about, etc... Also, I don't understand how they see it to be alright to use people and organizations in the community to better our campus, while really providing nothing back to the community that's giving so much. I think this very much relates to the conversation we had about if we feel a part of a larger community than just Tufts. I think the people in this organization definitely do not, which is why they are very focused on just staying within their comfort zone of the Tufts bubble. Hopefully as they explore their expansion into the community they'll realize just what they can achieve, and will really start to make it a priority in their daily operations.