The Empowered vs. The Experts

(Google, 2018)

Fresh off of a weekend-long training in Denver with AmeriCorps VISTA, NSAIE (National Society for American Indian Elderly) and dozens of other post-grad volunteers, I moved into my tiny Bangor apartment at about 90% nervous and 10% excited.  Or the opposite?  It was tough to tell, honestly. 

I had no clue what to expect from my new position on Indian Island in the Penobscot Nation Elder Services Department, but I had a ton of ideas I'd compiled to assist them in building capacity while effectively engaging the elder population on the reservation (utilizing a Community-Building model), and all the enthusiasm in the world to do it.  

None of it actually turned out like I had planned, but I like to think that's for the best.  

Burkhard's (2014) chapter about community organizing has, unsurprisingly, brought to mind my one personal experience with community-based practice to date.  It was a chaotic year, to say the least.  I had three different supervisors - one for VISTA, one with the NSAIE, and one on the reservation in the Elder Services Office - each with a very different (and sometimes conflicting) set of expectations.  In addition, partway through the year, the Spirit of the Sun replaced the NSAIE as the sponsoring non-profit organization partnering with VISTA.  But one of the most valuable lessons I learned from that whirlwind experience was the knowledge of how to look at a single problem through several different lenses.  Who has the authority to define a problem that needs addressing within a community?  And once that's been decided, whose solution is the right one?       

These types of questions, in this particular scenario, needed to first be examined from a racial and historical perspective before our team could make any headway.  But in the end, our process of looking for helpful, sustainable programming and capacity-building opportunities for the tribe's elders brought with it the realization that the client (in this case, the Penobscot Nation) must always be treated as the sole expert of its needs, strengths and challenges.  Not only that, but client-led endeavors are far more sustainable, practical and powerful than anything we as outside "experts" can accomplish on our own.  For me, I noticed that the more I let go of my ego and demonstrated that I was willing to act with the community rather than simply on its behalf, to operate on its time-frame and with its values rather than my own or VISTA's, the easier and more fruitful our interactions became.  

Therefore, I think a main role for a community practitioner should be to act as a megaphone.  We are not here to "fix" community-based problems as we understand them, but to (in both micro and macro-level practice) use our influence to amplify the voices of the individuals, communities and populations who have been silenced due to marginalization or oppression.  If we respect them as the experts of their own experiences, pre-equipped with an innate understanding of the best possible intervention strategies for their own communities, then I believe we will have succeeded in honoring the tenets of our profession as they apply to social justice and empowerment.  

References:

Burkhardt, S. (2014). Macro practice in social work for the 21st century: bridging the macro-micro 
                 divide. Los Angeles: SAGE.