What are ‘changemakers’?
Changemakers are people who want to make a difference in communities, particularly in the lives of those most marginalized by society’s injustices. Changemakers are not people who come in from the outside to impose solutions on others; they understand that communities and contexts are complex and that change is best brought about through building long-term relationships founded on respect.
Full-time changemakers are people who make a social issue their full-time work. They are found in neighbourhood houses, non-profit organizations, schools, and other communities. Their work is to understand complex social systems and work to influence those systems in positive ways. Their ability to influence change lies in the relationships they build at multiple levels within community.
In some ways, Canadian residents who work alongside full-time changemakers can be seen as “part-time changemakers”. These are people who have jobs / work, and who want in addition to their work to have a positive impact on society. They want to find ways to respect the hard work and knowledge of full-time changemakers, and yet they also want to be connected to the issues and communities they care about. They are in many ways acting as ‘allies’:
Allies are people who recognize the unearned privilege they receive from society’s patterns of injustice and take responsibility for changing these patterns (Anne Bishop)
Why don’t people just donate money to something they care about?
Donating money is valuable and important – and, for those who want to be involved (part-time) in creating a better world, the desire to donate, or to be involved in some way, needs to come through relationships. Local and international organizations always need financial contributions – and in a broader sense, they needed allies and advocates who really ‘get it’. Global Solidarity Retreats are just one way for you to learn, grow, and build long-lasting relationships for change.
Why don’t people just volunteer for a week during their holidays?
In many ways, this initiative was started in response to the vacation-time ‘voluntourism’ trend. While the desire to contribute to a social initiative is important, intensive ‘holiday’-style volunteerism, whether local or international, has been widely questioned. It builds relationships between people, provides opportunity for ‘tangible’ contribution, and is a profound learning experience for participants. At the same time, organizing and leading short-term international trips comes at significant cost to local communities and organizations.
The motivations behind short-term intensive volunteering are mixed. Participants have a desires to learn, to connect with others, to be transformed by an experience. For many participants there are additional unstated objectives – the desire for ‘tourism of poverty’ as a way to appreciate what privilege they have, the desire to take beautiful photos, the desire to look good to friends and colleagues. Participants may leave with a false sense of simplicity around the issue at hand, and may have little few ways to take action based on the learning they have gained.
Global Solidarity Retreats are about finding ways to make a commitment and build relationships that avoid the costs of short-term international service. Energy is focused on relationship-building wit full-time changemakers who have a complex, nuanced understanding of the issues in the community and the change they want to see.
Is work that aims to ‘make the world a better place’, whether local or global, inherently colonizing and/or oppressive?
There are many who would say so; and yet connections between nations and between those of more and less privilege are a part of our world. While some current work does reinforce existing inequality in the structures of their word, there are many organizations and groups that work from a place of allyship, solidarity, and recognition of our shared struggle.
Global Solidarities aims to find ways to work as allies. While there are possibilities for this work to become inadvertently colonizing or oppressive, given the structures we operate within, we aim to maintain an open mind and invite those engaged to provide challenge/contribution as necessary along the way.
Who do you think will actually do this?
Not everyone who travels internationally to volunteer would be willing to give up their own international travel and instead spend that money on a within-Canada immersive experience. However there are some people, a significant minority, who ‘get’ it and will be interested in this initiative. This doesn’t need to be, nor can it be, a solution for everyone. It’s a small-scale solution. It’s about finding a way to match the passion and interest of Canadians with the valuable change-making work of the Global south.