Dear reader, thank you so much for wanting to explore my Pathway Post further. This post is a little different from the ones I have submitted before. Here I will be walking you through our planning and execution process for Alternative Spring Break. My goal is for this to serve as a practical guide for future fellows and anyone interested in designing meaningful, community-engaged experiences.
The little seedling of inspiration for this trip came to me last year as we were wrapping up our Chicana/o Alternative Break in San Diego. We had just finished a dignity workshop with one of our community partners, Alliance San Diego and one of the members of the San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium was kind enough to share their story with us. She went around the room and spoke about her life as a refugee woman and that was when I realized just how unique the refugee experience can be.
As a child of immigrants and someone who has worked with various advocacy groups for immigrant rights, a lot of what I was hearing felt strangely familiar. I understood displacement and what it was like to navigate a system that simply was not built for you while also fighting for acceptance within the society that perpetuates those systems. But, there were also many layers to her experience that I had not considered before. This small moment really pushed me to think beyond my own understanding of immigration and showed me that even in communities we feel connected to, there are vastly different lived experiences.
That moment stayed with me throughout the entire planning process of this year's Alternative Spring Break. I was constantly challenging myself to be more intentional about the experience I was designing and what stories should be centered. I did not want to repeat what had been done before. I wanted all participants to eventually do the same and sit with that complexity as well as challenge their own assumptions. That is where this Alternative Spring Break Began.
As I went about completing the theory of change model for this trip, that reflection led me to a larger question, what does it actually mean to be a global citizen? I found myself thinking about the way movement across borders is framed. In many cases, people from marginalized communities are labeled as “immigrants,” while Americans living abroad will more often than not choose the term “expat.” Believe me that distinction is not neutral. It reflects power.
Sitting with that tension helped me realize that global citizenship is not just about travel or exposure to diversity. It has to be centered in accountability and humility. Especially If we are asking students to enter communities that are not their own, even if they are found within the U.S., we have to be intentional about how we show up and dismantle the harmful assumptions we carry with us.
That is what eventually shaped the focus of this trip. I wanted us to intentionally explore what it means to be a global citizen not just as an identity, but as a responsibility that requires us to examine systems, power dynamics, and our place within it all.
- Josie J. Sorcia
Preparation for the trip began long ago during our first semester as fellows in the Center for Social Impact. In accordance with our center’s theory of change we had to make sure that this trip was not solely service based. While many institutions will see direct service as the best way to educate students on community engagement, our center likes to take a more systems oriented approach. In the moment, direct service feels fulfilling and inspires people to take action but when we redirect our focus to the long-term outcomes instead of the short term outputs, these service projects alone are not sufficient. But, if we pair direct service projects with systems oriented thinking that equips students with the tools and confidence needed to execute their vision for a better tomorrow by tackling issues at the root cause, we create a more sustainable and effective social change initiative.
At our center, we ground our work in relational care, the understanding that nothing exists in isolation. Care moves outward from the self, to our relationships with others, to the communities we are a part of, and eventually to the systems we are a part of. This framework was developed from principles in Braiding Sweetgrass, which teaches us that responsibility flows from relationships and that care must be reciprocal. As Stephen M. R. Covey reminds us, relationships move at the speed of trust, and as Adrienne Maree Brown teaches, social change moves at the speed of relationships. Relational care asks us to move from ego to eco and act with the guiding principle of ‘do no harm’ across interpersonal, communal, and systemic levels.
When mapping social change issues it is easy to get caught up in the “what is happening” before we examine “why it’s happening?”. Because of this It would have been easy to focus on logistics, where to go, what to do, who to meet. But, if we truly wanted to understand what would be most effective on this trip we had to look at the historical and structural context. Because while history might not always repeat itself it does tend to rhyme. For this reason my fellow trip leader and I decided to read Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here by Jonathan Blitzer. This book explores the history of immigration policy through the lived experience of Latin American refugees. It helped us better understand the decades of policy decisions, displacement and shifting global dynamics that perpetuated the systemic inequalities we see today.
The next step was to condense what we had learned and deliver it in a way that was engaging and educational for our trip participants. Participants were required to attend three orientation sessions where they critically and thoughtfully engaged with the Center for Social Impacts Strategic Impact Continuum. Students were also asked to reflect on who they are in relation to the communities we would be engaging with. This included thinking about their identity, background, access to resources, and lived experience. Our goal was not to create guilt or distance, but nurture a heightened awareness.Because if we are not conscious of how we show up in a space, we risk reinforcing the power dynamics we are trying to understand.
To measure the participant growth we introduced the Active Citizen Continuum. Rather than viewing service as a one-time act, the continuum shows civic engagement as a progression. This helped participants move past performative or short-term engagement and encouraged them to start thinking about sustained involvement. It reinforced our message that meaningful social impact is not defined by a single experience, but by continued action and commitment over time. These tools reminded everyone that this trip was not about stepping into a community to “help”. It was about understanding your role within larger systems and reevaluating how you’ve engaged with them in order to ethically engage with them moving forward.
To be as effective as possible we have to ensure we are intentionally selecting our community partners. You’re not just scheduling visits, who you choose to learn from will ultimately shape how participants understand and engage with the theme of the trip. Because of how sensitive this work is we wanted to ensure that the organizations selected were led by individuals with lived experience. We also wanted to make sure we were highlighting different dimensions of the immigrant and refugee experience.
One of the things I paid close attention to when vetting community partners was their ability to distinguish between outputs and outcomes. In other words, how organizations understand and measure their impact. Many organizations are too focused on what is produced such as the amount of resources distributed or the number of people helped. While these are important metrics to measure they can not paint a complete picture on their own. On another hand outcomes focus on what actually changes as a result of those outputs.
That small distinction can tell you a lot about an organization and how they choose to engage with the communities they are serving. Organizations that center outcomes are more likely to engage with work that is both sustainable and responsive to community identified needs. Another thing to look out for is a community partner's willingness to engage as co-educators, and create a space for open dialogue. One sided presentations will quickly turn your learning block into an extractive engagement. Ask yourself if either you or your community partner are taking from the other or are you building something that is mutually beneficial.
The easiest way to go about this is to create a running list of 10-12 potential partners and request to meet with them over zoom or teams. As trip leaders it can be easy to feel like you have to reinvent the wheel or plan and execute on every single part of the learning experience. But that is not the case at all, community partners do this work every day so don’t be afraid to ask for some support. The people we are contacting have the same passion as we do and it was so cool to see them light up with joy at the thought of contributing to our students' growth.
It was also great to see just how interconnected the social impact network was in Seattle. It seemed like everyone knew someone else that we could reach out or had already reached out to. It filled me and our staff with such excitement and really helped us see the collaborative dynamic within the city of Seattle. But it was not always easy, truthfully a lot of our community partners weren’t able to confirm with us until the week before we left. So if you or your organization finds itself in a similar scenario just trust that everything will fall into place. I also recommend getting really persistent with your phone calls if needed. Emails do tend to get lost and many times you will be redirected from department to department until you strike gold with the perfect facilitator for your learning block.
Community Resources
This section highlights helpful tools or guides that support real-world application of the Pathway.
This book prepared me and my fellow trip leader by providing historical context on U.S. immigration policy through personal narratives, helping frame immigration as a long-standing systemic issue rather than a current, isolated challenge.
Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?
This book is what El Centro de la Raza uses as their guide to social entrepreneurship. It explores justice, inequality, and collective responsibility and reinforces the idea that meaningful social change requires both systemic understanding and sustained action.
CATO Institute: Immigrants' Recent Effects on Government Budgets
This study was cited many times by Kristen at TSOS and provides an economic analysis of immigration’s impact on government spending and revenue, offering a policy-based perspective on how immigration is framed in national debates.
This podcast was recommended to us by Kristen at TSOS. It is an accessible news and analysis podcast that connects current political events to historical context.
Lucid Social Change Design Toolkit
This Lucid Chart designed by Cassie Bingham and Bailey Whitaker was used to plan and map our Alternative Spring Break experience. It helped align our activities with intended outcomes plus ensured our approach remained intentional, structured, and centered on community needs.
This section reflects on a firsthand or immersive experience related to the Pathway topic.
Finally the day came when we packed up our two SUV’s and began our 13 hour road trip from Orem, Utah to Seattle, WA. The energy was tangible and it carried on through the entire trip. To help us center lived experience we began our first learning block with Their Story Is Our Story (TSOS) an organization that collects and shares the experiences of refugees and allies to encourage understanding and empathy. Kristen Smith Dayley, Executive Director at TSOS met with us at the Wing Luke Museum to give participants the historical context behind the fight for refugee rights. The people that Kristen and her team have helped, inspired us to uplift and champion refugee stories, in a way that is dignifying and empathetic. One of the most shocking facts we learned is just how long the refugee process can be. Kristen and her team have helped families for over a decade to achieve that sense of security for their families in the U.S..
I bring this up because I feel like when instant gratification is not involved it can be easy to feel as if the work we are doing is stagnant but persistence and hope will eventually bring great change. While we may not be able to change the world we can always do something to make our little corner of the world a little bit better and that is exactly what Kristen and her team at TSOS are doing. She also did a great job at referring our participants to various credible researched articles that showed just how crucial immigrants and refugees are to our economy. I have made sure to include these below in our pathway resources for anyone interested in them.
The next day we wanted to focus on the city wide initiatives that support the non-profits in Seattle. We had the opportunity to meet with The University of Washington’s Community Engagement & Leadership Education Center (CELE), The Seattle Office of Immigrant & Refugee Affairs, El Centro de la Raza and The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. These sessions did a great job at highlighting how institutions, policy, and legal advocacy operate at different levels, all while remaining deeply interconnected. Open collaboration between these organizations ensured the refugee and immigrant communities they were serving had better access to opportunities and support. I loved seeing this happen in real time, it showed just how easy it can be to share accountability between the non-profit, public, and private sectors. I do think that many major cities can learn quite a lot from the city of Seattle’s initiatives. Especially coming from a state where we do not always see this kind of support from the top down.
Our last day in Seattle could not have had a more perfect ending. We visited Casa Latina Seattle, Kandelia at the Seattle World School, and held our final reflection session with Mr. Emmanuel Dolo and African Young Dreamers Program Intl. (AYDEPI). All of these stood out to me for different reasons but Casa Latina and the Seattle World School definitely made the water works. Casa Latinas workers center helps advocate and dispatch skilled and dependable jornaleros (day laborers), providing them with protections they don’t usually have access to. These protections matter because wage theft, exploitation, and occupational injuries are common in this population especially for those who are undocumented. Again as a proud child of immigrants this meant a lot to me and got me thinking of ways in which we can incorporate something similar back home.
Kandelia at the Seattle World School and the African Young Dreamers Program Intl. helped us see how the youth are championing social change in Seattle. As someone who entered the U.S. education system not knowing the culture or the language it was so healing to see a place that celebrated diversity. The Seattle World School has done a great job at identifying community based needs and executing on them. Two things that really stood out to me was their in building medical and dental clinics that allowed students to receive healthcare during school hours so that they wouldn’t have to miss classes and their parents wouldn’t have to take time away from work. They also have a working scholars program that allows students to work full-time and still graduate with a traditional high school diploma by taking afternoon or evening classes that coincide with their work schedule. They are truly one of a kind and inspired us all so much!
By the end of the day all our students had left feeling inspired and ready to take action which is why we ended our last learning block with Mr. Dolo and his Team at AYDEPI. AYDEPI was founded because Fiona Okech and her Mother/Founder Beatrice Kiraguri realized that many non-profit boards were made of people who looked nothing like them or carried the lived experience they did. They saw an opportunity to place immigrant and refugee youth in that same position of power so they may feel empowered to advocate for their community. I don’t know about you but I could not imagine myself as a non-profit youth director and co-founder at the age of 20 but Fiona and her young colleagues were doing it successfully. It really got us to move past fear and into action, especially once Mr. Dolo had us go around the table and give him a detailed explanation of how we planned to take what we’ve learned throughout our entire trip and implement real change in our communities.
We did promise to keep each other accountable and almost two weeks later during our final group session it was evident that these lessons stuck with them. The quotes that follow allowed us to say with great confidence that we successfully helped move our students through the active citizen continuum. In their post-trip surveys they shared, “I felt like I learned more about people, their stories, and what people still go through today,” emphasizing the importance of proximity and lived experience. “It’s not just about helping, but about responsibility and action,” a move toward more intentional engagement. But if there was one that encapsulated what global citizenship should be it was, “We are all humans: citizens, immigrants, refugees. Though our experiences are different, we share humanity.”
Call to Action
This section offers closing reflections and invites readers to consider how they can apply the insights in their own lives and communities.
I could not be more proud of this year's participants or more grateful for our amazing community partners contribution to this work. It was the perfect way to end my time at Utah Valley University and The Center for Social Impact. When I first started my journey at the Center I was scared of uncertainty and the thought of the future was draining.
Through programs like alternative break I was inspired to find my people and take action. I promise you that it does not take a lot to create meaningful change in someone's life. Do your best to operate from a place of abundance and see how you can give to others with things you already have. Whether it’s by volunteering, educating others, advocating for policy change or simply being a listening ear for someone experiencing hardship. This is needed now more than ever.
If I can ask you to do anything I ask that you sit down with someone with an opposing opinion to yours and take the time to hear their story. Because when you seek to understand someone's “why” before reacting to their “what”, you realize that everyone is who they are and how they are for a reason. We must learn to be “soft on people and hard on systems.” Because people are shaped by experiences that are far more complex than we tend to assume.
This relational approach is where meaningful change can begin. It helps us move beyond division and towards understanding. Because it is through that understanding that we can build communities rooted in empathy and accountability to promote lasting impact.
