Challenge Day Highlights: Basic Needs, LT'21
To keep you connected to LT and current issues and topics discussed in the curriculum, LT shares highlights and resources from the recent Challenge Day.
The Basic Needs Challenge Day was centered around these questions: How do we decide and whom do we listen to in finding solutions to systemic barriers so communities can meet their basic needs to not just survive, but thrive? What role should government play in this? Nonprofits? Private Industry? How do we define the “right” or “best” solution for complex problems?
The day was designed to support these LT curriculum outcomes:
Community and Belonging: Build strong connections among people across many lived experiences. Feel inspired and empowered to act by belonging to an enduring community of regional stewards.
Regional Challenges and Opportunities: Understand regional challenges and opportunities and how they are interconnected, including how systemic racism impedes our ability to create a healthy community for all.
Leadership: Grow skills, tools, and strategies to act as a leader and change agent in one’s own chosen area, including an ability to work within and across sectors to address systemic racism and build a more resilient and equitable region.
This write-up is a brief overview of the day and is organized around the three curriculum outcomes. To get a feel for the full day, read the agenda here. For a full list of resources related to this Challenge Day, read the prework here.
Many thanks to HomeStreet Bank for their sponsorship of this day and leadership in our community.
Video of Dr. Bertice Berry
Community and Belonging
Class members watched a short video, in which Dr. Bertice Berry tells a moving story about growing up in poverty and sometimes not having enough to eat. In the midst of these challenges, she and her brother could look ahead and plan for a better future.
After watching the video, class members took time -- individually and then in small groups -- to reflect on how the video impacted them, how they are inspired to plant a seed for change in their communities, and what that change would look like.
Regional Challenges and Opportunities
Advocating for a Solution to Food Insecurity
Photo: Shuxuan Zhou, LT'21, Seattle Office for Civil Rights
In small groups, class members engaged in a role play activity to evaluate proposed solutions for using a grant to help a community address food insecurity. Each group was given two proposals to consider. Here's an example of a pair of solutions class members discussed:
Option 1: Use the money to supplement SNAP (food stamps). This is the most efficient way to get the money (no additional administrative overhead) and focuses the money on the families most in need.
Option 2: Subsidize a grocery store/market to open in Flatland. Use the subsidy to keep prices low yet pay competitive wages. This makes diverse grocery options available to the residents of Flatland and offers another source of jobs for the community.
Resources:
Leadership
Examining Solutions to Food Insecurity: Debriefing Solution Options and Evaluating Solutions
Building off the first role play activity, class members engaged in a second role play centered on leadership and decision making.
Breaking into small groups, class members assumed the role of City Council staff. As City Council staff, how do you evaluate and select the best proposed solution? The class was asked to consider questions regarding how they think about decision making, what values they apply, and what information is important.
Questions the class considered included:
How do you define “the best decision possible”?
Due to time constraints, testimony will be limited to three people. Whom do you call and why?
A councilmember approaches you and says: “There are all these competing interests, how do I weigh them?” What do you respond and why?
Through this activity, the class explored how leadership involves making trade-offs, an aspect of leadership the class will continue to wrestle with throughout this year.
