Essay

Tyson Laurer

Prof. Dana Torrey

SINQ Leading Social Change

March 15, 2020

The Beach Community

The community engagement project that we worked on this term was an amazing way for

me to visualize the course content quite literally living and breathing throughout our world. It

was an experience for us to see the social change itself unraveling at the actions of our very own

hands. The social change model, which was our framework for our class this term, was a great

way to analyze situations in my community endeavors and extract meaning from each interaction

I had, as it provided a “a framework for groups to improve their ability to function effectively as

a collection of people joined to work towards a common goal” (Komives & Wagner, 2016, pg

20). This model is a guide to the ways we interact with others and influence change, and the best

way to do that is by getting into a community that you have a deep connection and care for. I

think that the best way to create lasting social change is by exploring our passions and by

involving ourselves in movements that are important to us, and by getting into the front lines of

that movement is what I think this social change model represents.

The idea of following one’s own passions in pursuit of leadership and social change

aligns with the values of “consciousness of self” and “congruence” (Komives & Wagner, 2016,

pg 21). The idea of consciousness of self represents the self introspection and review of our own

feelings and realizing what we are passionate about while congruence is the process of

identifying our passions and values and consistently acting on them. For my community

involvement this term, I volunteered for a beach clean-up organization in my hometown of

Longbeach, Washington and spent a weekend working with their leaders to remove trash from

the coast. Growing up at the beach, I felt that I sort of fell in love with nature and all of the

natural beauty that the beach has. Whether it is the animals, the plants, or just the view of a

sunset over the ocean, everything that the beach has to offer has a special place in my heart and

in the hearts of people who live in or even just visit coastal communities. To me, my passion for

this volunteer work comes from my drive to protect the beauty that I’ve grown up with, and the

hope that others can still have the experiences that I have been so lucky to experience at my age.

I feel that by cleaning up trash along the beach is also an investment into my future experiences

that I hope to have with my family at the beach one day. By protecting the area and keeping it in

peak condition for the native plants and animals, we can enjoy the area without losing out on the

natural beauty that is so important to the experience. In the terms of the first two C’s of the

model, consciousness of self and congruence, this was my thought process in my self awareness

of the importance of the coast in my life.

With self awareness and introspection I realized my true passion for the care and

protection of coastal wildlife, but acting on it and joining a group that aligns with those passions

requires commitment, the third C of the model. Commitment “is found in the decisions to select

a spe​cific major or career field, a life partner, and a focus of community service, and it is found

in accepting appointment to a committee that will take time and energy to make a credible

contribution” (Komives & Wagner, 2016, pg 25). It is the idea that we are putting our great

efforts into what we have previously realized is important to our aspirations for social change. It

is here where I found my group up in Longbeach, Washington and made a commitment to help

with their work for the weekend I was there. This in my head is sort of the transition point of the

model, where we start to develop the group goals and community interaction that leadership and

social change is really based on. In the model, we can think of this as the moment in which

singular values turn into the group values that will carry us into creating a better world. In my

experience, commitment was me contacting this group and taking the 3 hour trip to support them

for the weekend and further develop myself as a leader in my collaboration with my fellow

volunteers.

Collaboration allows us to maximize our efforts and work toward our shared common

goals in a way that is the epitome of efficiency. I like to think of it in terms of a business. If

every business was run by just one person, would anything significant ever get done? If my

organization's job is to clean the beaches and prevent wildlife from being harmed, would one

person be able to cover the entirety of the beach successfully? Of course not. Great ideas can

come from great people as individuals. And many individuals become the best leaders in the

world, but they get their from the communities that support and help them with their shared

common goals. In my volunteer experiences, one couple had started the initiative to do weekly

beach cleanups, and through that they created and founded an organization to do so and gained

the community following. The people up there are so passionate about the natural beauties of the

wild coast life, and bringing them together to work to protect it is an amazing gift. Together we

spent countless hours walking up and down the coastline removing plastics and other trash from

the natural environments and at the end of each day, knowing that we were making a place that

we all had a deep connection to was a feeling that is compared to none. While one small beach in

a world of places that are being polluted, the idea that there are people that lead these movements

gives me so much hope for the other communities that are just like mine, and any organization

achieving social change in many ways.

While everything on my weekend journey seemed perfect and enlightening from what I

have explained so far, nothing in the world works without its fair share of conflicts.

Organizations will always have disagreements, people will see things and take approaches to

situations differently, but that is part of the beauty of working with diverse groups of people and

is described as the value of “controversy with civility” (Komives & Wagner, 2016, pg 20). Many

people in the specific community I volunteered for are retired, so I was mostly the only younger

person there. This for me was an interesting experience because instead of butting heads with

different ideas in the old "young kid vs experienced elder narrative," I felt like I learned a lot

from the experiences that my fellow volunteers shared, and I hope I was able to share my

younger view and ideas with them as well. One big thing that hit me is how much everyone I met

and worked with cared for the beach. Most of them were retired and had found a passion in

protecting the coast. It seemed like their lives, community, and belonging was tied to this place,

and that protecting it through the organization was a way to give back. For me, seeing that

dedication and drive so far in the future made me want to work towards their emotion and

dedication later in life. It pushed me to see nature differently, and appreciate the small things

more, because something that may seem so small at first glance can become the thing that people

revolve their worlds around one day, which was interesting for me to see.

The idea of controversy with civility really was more apparent in our day to day activities

when working, which leads back to what I was originally mentioning. I was able to bring new

ideas to the table and to the efficiency of our work, and instead of putting it off as just a young

guy messing up the system, everyone respected my ideas and we adapted together to clean the

beach as efficiently as possible in the time we had. The communication and understanding

among us was great, as our goals were aligned and we all were working towards the same thing.

Differences were appreciated and allowed us to work in so many new ways.

With every task completed and every bit of work we have put into our communities over

the past 10 weeks, everything leads to the idea of change. To me, change arises from the little

things we do every day that help the world. Volunteering for even just a few hours each month

can make a huge difference, and we all should use this tool moving forward into whatever path

life takes us. Some say that what can an individual do that will change the world? But it is the

individuals that lead the communities that breed the ideas of social change that we all have seen

in our volunteer studies, as well as in the media and in our own lives each day. We are difference

makers, and together with the right set of values we become the communities and leaders that

will change the world. You just have to know when to let the change in.