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Dec. 2, 2011
Encouraging good citizenship
SFU’s Semester in Dialogue focuses on economy and faith.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
“Dignity. Mercy. Love. Compassion. How do these values impact our local economies? How do they equip us to respond to rising prices, unemployment and a widening income gap?”
These two questions were the foundation of the Simon Fraser University Undergraduate Semester in Dialogue project this semester: Faith in the System? The class of 16 students, with some help from faculty, were in charge of everything for the Nov. 23 afternoon event that took place at Heritage Hall, from the program’s conception, to fundraising, designing, conducting and evaluating the dialogue that was attended by approximately 85 people.
The professors of the fall 2011 course are Mark Winston, academic director, SFU Centre for Dialogue; Robert Daum of the Vancouver School of Theology, Iona-Pacific Inter-Religious Centre; and Heesoon Bai of the SFU faculty of education. Three programs a year are offered, Winston told the Independent, “one each semester, and SFU is highly supportive of not only continuing but expanding the program.”
According to the program’s website, Semester in Dialogue began in 2002, and uses “dialogue and experiential learning to enhance student engagement with community.” To date, “436 students and 481 guest thought leaders have participated in 23 Semesters in Dialogue.” One in six students of the program has been published in national and local newspapers, as well as other publications, since the program began. As well, “students have worked with municipal and regional governments to research, design and promote new initiatives, such as a local food hub, Vancouver’s Greenest City Initiative,” volunteered with a range of organizations and “founded businesses based on the principles of dialogue, sustainability and community engagement.”
Each semester focuses on a topic – past choices have included urban planning, health, First Nations, citizenship, housing and the Olympics. Students develop and implement “assignments with tangible outcomes useful to civic society.” They are supported in their efforts by, among others, university faculty and “up to 30 thought leader guests each semester who dialogue with and mentor students.”
Faith in the System? featured five main speakers: Bai, who related the topic to Buddhism, Kelvin Bee of the Coast Salish people, Rev. Tim Dickau, Rabbi Laura Duhan Kaplan and Felipe Lozano, who used to run a micro-finance company in Mexico. The focus of the afternoon though was more intimate group discussions, at which participants exchanged ideas about values and resilience within the economic context given by the dialogue organizers, who were students Nicole Armos, Yveta Avramova, Elyse Brazel, Emma Darling, Geordan Hankinson, Peggy Lam, Wade Lifton, Chelsea Masterman, Claudia Nobauer, Sabine Obeid, Andrew Paterson, Max K. Serpa, Lea Silver, Esther Tauby, Megan te Boekhorst and Ariel Young.
Summaries of the small group discussions were presented in images and words, with each table depicting their conclusions on a square of poster board, the squares to be connected as would be a quilt. The goal was to answer the question, “How might we channel these values into concrete responses to our fears and hopes for our communities?”
In sharing how he felt the dialogue went, Winston also summarized the varying responses to this question. “I was very, very proud of our students, and also of the rich conversation the participants brought to the day,” he said. “What was apparent in our debrief was that that faith, spiritual and contemplative practices have much to offer civil society, particularly around inclusiveness, support, community and human interactions. These are elements of faith communities that would be beneficial in a wider setting, even without any spiritual component.”
Noting that “people seemed to come out of the event excited about new possibilities,” Nobauer said, “Many of the possibilities that were presented to the group as a whole, from our smaller breakout groups, were about connectedness. Somehow, the entire group felt that connection to the other was something important and lacking in the larger Vancouver community.”
About how she became involved in Semester in Dialogue, Nobauer said, “Two of my closest friends have been through the program and several others have benefited from it also. So, I have known that I wanted to take the program but I was waiting for a topic to spark my interest,” she explained. “The topic of this semester – Religion, Spirituality, Contemplative Inquiry and Social Action – was something that really resonated with me. My father [is Catholic and] I was raised Catholic but my mother is Jewish; as a result, I have always been interested in religion because I came from two major religious traditions.”
The process that led to Faith in the System? was a long one, said Nobauer. “As a group, we talked many times about the values of our society and the things that we felt were lacking in our consumerist culture. It seemed that our society was telling us that, in order to be happy, we need to buy more things. These things, instead of making us happy, made us sad, filled us with false hope, while, in the meantime, we are destroying the planet and the system began to fail, as we can see by the current economic crisis. We did not want to focus on an economic conversation because it was limiting, but a greater space opened when we began to talk about community and how we could support each other.
“Our goal was to create a concrete outcome,” she continued. “We had no expectation for the content of this outcome; we wanted the answer to arise from the conversations at the dialogue.”
“I think the afternoon was a great success,” fellow student Tauby told the Independent. “There were people from many religions, cultures, professions and age groups all joining together to discuss how the current economic situation is impacting our communities and what we can do about it. From inspirational speakers, religious leaders, student-led workshops and hands-on activities, we engaged in respectful dialogue and learned how the economy has impacted each of us individually, including our fears, and then worked on ways to find some hope in the situation and transfer that to our families, communities and the greater public.”
About how she came to be involved, Tauby explained, “I was interested in this program, as it was going to be using religion and spirituality as a way to make social change in the greater community,” she said. “After a thorough application process last winter and interview during Passover, I was happy to have been accepted into this full-time, intensive university program for the fall semester.
“I feel very fortunate to have been given an extensive Judaic and general studies education throughout my elementary and high school years and beyond, as my parents value both. Having the opportunity in one semester to learn about many faiths, share my knowledge of Judaism and then work with people representing various faiths on projects to effect social change locally has been an incredible experience.
“One project that stands out was called Making a Difference, where we had to research an organization that is impacting the Vancouver community and present it to our class. Our group decided on the Hebrew Free Loan Association and interviewed some of its board members for our project. Highlighting this outstanding longtime Vancouver Jewish organization and presenting it to many non-Jewish classmates was an experience I will never forget.”
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