Solidarity And Nonprofit Work

Charity and solidarity are both approaches to contributing nonprofit work and helping those in need. They vary, however, in their mindset and values. Charity approaches the population in need with the view that they are lacking in some way in comparison to those who are not in need, and aims to share those missing pieces and teach them to the population in need. It works under the premise that the volunteer comes from a group of greater intellect and expertise who have cultivated the skills and aspects necessary to have a successful life. The volunteer then goes into the underserved community to show them the right way to go about life so that they can improve their own situation. The emphasis is very much on the volunteers and their superiority, …show more content…
It emphasizes that the population in need is able to decide what they need most, and the volunteer’s role is to collaborate with the population to help satisfy those needs. The volunteers are therefore not there to lecture and forcefully impart their “wisdom” to the population, but rather consult them on what they need and using their own experiences and knowledge to contribute to a common goal in improving the circumstances of those whom they are serving. This type of approach is much more accountable to the population in need and can act to change the status quo and the structural inequities of …show more content…
As volunteers of CanU Reach, we have been engaging with junior high students in roles as mentors and teachers. I believe that we are engaged in solidarity because we are constantly seeking feedback from the participants on what they enjoy, what they don’t enjoy, and what they would like to see in the future. In fact, this program itself is fairly recent and stems from a want of CanU participants to engage in higher level activities at an older age. Programming used to finish at a younger age at which point there was nothing left for the participants to engage in to further develop themselves. In addition, this year was the first year that we ran the Reach 2 program, which is an advanced health sciences outreach program that combined parts from various colleges to create an interprofessional case that the participants work through each week. This program arose from the want of past year Reach 1 participants to return to the Bannatyne Campus and engage in further health sciences programming. Finally, aspects of these 2 programs are constantly being changed based on participant feedback, so that we can offer them the experience that they want. This includes the type of activities, the schedule of their time on campus, and the way that we interact with them. For example, we try to give them more responsibilities during their time on campus