Emma Powell ’20 describes her community organizing experience as a way to live the College’s value of ‘For and With Others.’
My name is Emma Powell. I’m from Haverhill, Massachusetts. I’m class of 2020. I’m a history and classics double major and my major involvements at Holy Cross were the Student Government Association, Eco-Action, and HC Fossil Free, which is the divestment campaign on campus.
So I think sort of that the common idea behind ‘for and with others’ is direct service, which of course is a huge component. But for me, I kind of gone towards my ‘for and with others’ values in a different way in terms of community organizing.
Specifically this year, it was sort of a catalyst for my environmental change that I did on campus. And I really believe that policy change and advocacy work is a huge part of living out your values and how you can do that in a community organizing setting. And there was a few things that we did that I think that really kind of highlight how we were able to get our campus and our institution to really care about environmental awareness.
The first thing would be the youth climate strike which happened at the beginning of the year in conjunction with the Chaplains’ Office. And it was the first time I seen a large scale show up for the environment on campus in a way like that and we all gathered on the Dinand steps and then joined Worcester community organizers who were also setting out goals for climate justice, things like that. And then the green fund is a fund that we passed this year that’s $30,000 worth of grant money for students to apply for environmental projects. I really really recommend incoming first years to look into how they can get a project funded through that because it was a lofty policy goal that we had and were finally able to pass it so that was something that was really great. And then we hired a sustainability director this year which is going to be great and I recommend reaching out to her to first years. And then Purple Goes Green week is something that we do every year and we were able to keep doing that amidst virtual learning.
So all of these things I think really show sort of ‘for and with others’ through policy and education that sometimes you neglect as part of that statement and I think it is a really important thing.
