Support and training in diversity, social justice and community work for Dartmouth students and staff. Includes a 3-day off-campus retreat. For more information or to request an application, please e-mail Deep.Community@Dartmouth.EDU.
Training Program: 4-6pm Mondays, March 31 – May 19
Weekend Workshop: April 18-20
Support Groups: 4-5pm Tuesdays (issues of social/economic class); 5-6pm Tuesdays (issues of gender); 4-5pm Thursdays (issues of race).
Applications Due: Saturday, March 29 at 6pm.
This intensive 8-week training program invites members of the Dartmouth community to address what it takes to build a diverse, committed, and dynamic human community. We will look at community-building on a personal, institutional, and social level and will also address the problems, pitfalls, and difficulties involved. Community seems to be something we both yearn for and find elusive. Here we can begin transforming the mystery into a set of practical tools, decisions, understandings, and shared commitments, which work when used.
Social oppression, fear, insecurities, isolation, misinformation, and stereotypes impact all of us, whether we are socialized into the victim role or hold positions of privilege and power. Drawing on insights from counseling theory and human liberation movements, Deep Community trains participants in a method of exchanging effective help with one another as we work to build relationships and communities characterized by love, peace, and justice. Through structured sharing and listening, we will open up to our emotional selves, our connections with others, and the full breadth of our own humanity, beyond the roles we've been conditioned to play. Come prepared to make a safe environment for all voices to be heard; come prepared to get close to people who are different from you; come prepared to examine yourself and be honest about what's real for you. As we explore the hopes, dreams, and challenges we face in forging human community, we will work to let change begin with ourselves.
Some Key Themes Include:
These support groups offer members of the Dartmouth community a space grounded in honesty, safety, and openness to explore how we are affected by issues surrounding race, gender, or social and economic class. Built around the same concepts and tools as the Training Program, these small groups are ideal for people who want to focus in depth on a particular aspect of social identity, or for those who cannot commit to the more extensive time demands of the full training. Each group will meet once a week for an hour, and you can come as often or as seldom as you wish throughout the term.
Key Issues Addressed:
I think of the Deep Community Program as sort of the culminating experience in my Dartmouth career. It was the one experience that was a catalyst for personal growth for me. I did the program my sophomore winter and before that time when I came to Dartmouth I had a lot of close-minded perceptions of a lot of different people and I sort of stayed to myself and was really isolated just because I hadn’t had an opportunity when I was growing up to interact with people from so many different backgrounds and I just wasn’t used to it. But Deep Community was like a safe space where you could get to know people on this really really personal level outside of the classroom, outside of all the activities that you participate in and it was really a catalyst to start breaking down those perceptions of other people that I had.
It influences me in the amount of risk that I’m willing to take in terms of stepping outside of that comfort zone…you get so pigeonholed into your own social communities and you get so comfortable in the place that you are. I’ve become so used to being uncomfortable that taking a risk doesn’t even seem like a risk to me any more because I’m so used to reaching for people even if I might have an immediate reaction to them or if I might have a perception of them. I personally attribute a lot of that to the Deep Community Program.
I think the Deep Community Program is awesome. It addresses the fundamental sort of disconnection that we have as people. And so a lot of, I think personally, a lot of the problems in society stem from the fact that I can’t understand you because there’s all these social barriers that tell me we can’t connect as people. So what the Deep Community Program does is break down some of those social barriers and help people sort of see over that and see people’s humanity underneath that. I think that’s one of the fundamental building blocks that you need to sort of address any issue. How can you address poverty or how can you address health care reform if you can’t understand the people living in these circumstances, if you can’t recognize the people living in these circumstances as human beings. So the first step is that you have to be able to see people as people and that’s what the Deep Community Program does. And does phenomenally.
—Echo Brown ’06
