The One Million Splotz of Glue Campaign

I got a full ride and apprenticeship to graduate school. One of only two the department gives out each year. I felt very lucky and validated. My research area was public policy, in particular public/private collaborations. My work was on community benchmarking and I was working out what would eventually become this Splotz of Glue/community building thing. Early into my first year I had a meeting with the department chair. He wanted to get to know me better and to find out what I was working on. I told him.

He shakes his head then waves his hand at me dismissing everything I was working on and explained to me how irrelevant it all was. There are people starving and I wanted to waste resources on these silly workshops. He was a compassionate man who assisted in the development of several United Nations food programmes. He wanted to guide me toward a new programme he was developing.

I wanted to tell him that my niece goes to a middle school that is falling apart and moldy. I wanted to tell him that some of her classmates are getting pregnant and that the rest of them are jealous. I wanted to tell him that her classmates think that these pre-teen mothers to be are so lucky because they will have a baby to love and care for. I wanted to tell him that her classmates do not read and are raised by parents who hated school. And I wanted to tell him that I knew these silly workshops would not end hunger or fix the schools, but that I truly believed that they would make a difference. That they would create a space for discussion and action. That they would be a process for change, that they would connect a team of young leaders who would go on to join his food programme and fix our schools.

But I did not. I changed my question. I learned how to do policy analysis and after my apprenticeship was completed left the department.

I get that this will not feed or house or free anyone. But I also get that this process can make a difference. It can right?

Share This

Posted on March 3rd, 2007 by Lloyd Y. Asato
Filed under: Backstory