Two Goddard Undergraduate students, Jay Masika (IBA ’16) and Kristin Schwab (IBA ’16), have joined forces to design and co-facilitate powerful Justice & Inclusion trainings for the Spring 2015 and Fall 2015 UGP residencies.
From Jay and Kristin’s description of their workshops, which they call, “From Packets to Practice: An All Community Workshop Exploring the Intersections Between Identity, Oppression, and Transformational Change”:
Each semester, we gather together for slightly more than a week. In such a short time, we build deep lasting relationships. Simultaneously, we feel like there are parts of ourselves that we can’t share–perhaps due to time constraints, feeling like an outlier in a group, or because we face marginalization in our day to day lives. Furthermore, individuals in this country and across the globe have been a witness to multiple forms of injustice, resulting in the continuation and the sprouting of movements such as Black Lives Matter, Environmental Justice, #Not1More, Trans* Rights, resistance to the Prison Industrial Complex, and Labor Rights, just to name a few. 
In this interactive workshop, we will explore our individual and collective stories and identities while noting the ways our experiences both differ and intersect. We will build a space and share tools for forming relationships across difference and understanding oppression – which is defined as “prolonged and systematic cruel or unjust treatment or control.”  Lastly, we will brainstorm ways to bring transformational changes to our communities– moving from fulfilling the social and ecological context in our packet work to taking meaningful action on our campus and in our worlds when we return home.
Images from Fall 2015’s during the UGP1 and UGP2 residencies:



Images from Spring 2015’s “From Packets to Practice,” held during UGP2:



“From Packets to Practice” developers and co-facilitators Kristin Schwab (in green shirt) and Jay Masika (with red cap) are in the photograph just above.